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CALIF.  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 


MY 
LAST  DRINK 


THE  GREATEST  HUMAN  STORY 
EVER  WRITTEN 


A  powerful  personal  history  of  a  Chicago 
Alderman  and  well-known  business  man 
who  dropped  from  power  and  wealth  to 
poverty  and  prison  through  drink. 


By  Alderman  JOSEPH  H.  FRANCIS,  Chicago 


A  Tragic  History  that  Every  Man   and  Woman 
in  America  Should    Read 


Published  by 

THE   EMPIRE  BOOK  CO., 

633   Plymouth   Court 
CHICAGO 

THE   MODERN  PRESS,  CHICAGO 


Copyright  1915  by  JOSEPH  H.  FRANCIS 


Booze  boycotts  the  brain. 

A  boozer  has  a  dent  in  his  brain. 

A  little  drink  makes  a  big  man  shrink. 

All  saloon  keepers  argue  that  a  fly  is  a  pest. 

Take  a  pony  of  brandy  and  ride  to  destruction. 

A  boozer  may  fool  himself,  but  he  cannot  fool  nature. 

Battling  with  booze  is  like  trying  to  corner  the  wind. 

A  saloon  keeper's  friendship  is  tied  with  a  rope  of  sand. 

* 

Drinking    men    are    the    architects    of    their   own    mis- 
fortunes. 

You  don't  find  comfort  or  prosperity  in  the  home  of  a 
booze  fighter. 

Some  men's  idea  of  pleasure  is   to  do  the  things  that 
brings  them  misery. 

When  you  see  a  prominent  citizen  trying  to  unlock  his 
front  door  with  a  lead  pencil,  look  out. 

The   only   man   in   the   universe   that   can   get    full   and 
keep  his  head  with  him  is  the  man  in  the  moon. 


21 2S5R3 


Whiskey  and  war  are  twins. 

Booze  is  the  best  stranger  in  the  world. 

Moderation  in  drinking  is  damnation  in  embryo. 

A  saloon  keeper  is  simply  a  stoker  for  the  devil. 

Booze  is  the  misery  of  many  for  the  gain  of  a  few. 

A  glass  of  booze  is  a  ticket  in  the  lottery  of  death. 

Let  us  crush  these  booze  artists  in  human  slaughter. 


A  lazy   man   never   kicks   when    carrying   a   heavy   load 
of  booze. 

A  saloon  keeper  floats  the  American  flag  and  hands  you 
a  shroud. 

If  you  want  to  pluck  the  flower  of  sorrow   follow  the 
booze  route. 

A    corkscrew    is    straight    compared    with    the    average 
saloon  keeper. 

Field    of    honor    for    sober    men,     Potter's    field     for 
drinking   men. 

A  saloon  keeper's  friendship  is  like  the  tide;  when  you 
are  all  in,  he's  out. 


Safety  first  is  sobriety  first. 

Gin  and  genius  make  a  faulty  team. 

A  whiskey  smile  soon  turns  to  a  frown. 

Alcohol  is  not  included  in  the  scheme  of  life. 

What  is  a  chaser?     Ask  the  snake  in  the  whiskey. 

It  is  only  a  short  life  from  the  Blackstone  to  the  Bride- 


well. 


Whiskey    is    the    monkey    wrench    in    the   machinery    of 
efficiency. 

The     saloons     do      not     need     regulation,      they     need 
strangulation. 

A   street   car   says: — "Pay   as    you    enter."      A   saloon, 
"Die  as  you  enter." 

A    saloon    thrives    on    widows'    tears,    mothers'    heart- 
aches and  starving  children. 

An  old  man  with  white  hair  is  today  more  in  demand 
than  a  young  man  with  a  red  nose. 

Split  a  bottle  of  champagne  with  a  saloon  keeper  and 
he  will  usually  reciprocate  by  splitting  a  bottle  of  beer. 


Thinkers  are  not  drinkers. 

Booze  has  no  place  in  business. 

Good  intentions  never  enter  saloon  doors. 

Every  "day  of  grace"  for  the  saloon  is  a  disgrace. 

A  boozer  is  the  one-legged  man  in  the  race  of  life. 


A    whiskey    blossom     on    your    nose    blooms    the    year 
'round. 


An  overdrawn  nature  account  and  bank  account  spell 
failure. 


The    race   today    is    not    for    the   swiftest    but    for    the 
soberest. 


Putting  alcohol   in  your  system   is   like   throwing  gaso- 
line on  a  flame. 


A     saloon     sign,     "Workingmen's     Home/'     should     be 
"Workingmen's  Morgue." 


The  public  school  is  the  foundation  of  life;   the  public 
saloon  is  the  foundation  of  death. 


A   man  can   go   through   mercantile   bankruptcy   several 
times — booze  bankruptcy  but  once. 


Think  before  you  drink. 

An  eye  opener  closes   the  eyes. 

The  men  who  booze  are  the  men  who  lose. 

The  best  substitute   for  the  saloon  is  the   home. 

Booze  ruins  one  internally,  externally  and  eternally. 

Americans  must  kill  King  Alcohol,  or  he  will  kill  them. 


Watch    your    step — that    it    doesn't    lead    you    into    the 
saloons. 


It's  a  short  road  from  good  fellowship  to  good  for 
nothingness. 

The  monarchy  of  King  Alcohol  seems  to  be  turning 
into  a  dry  republic. 

Public  opinion  supressed  firecrackers,  and  public 
opinion  will  supress  fire  water. 

If  Geor;g.e  Washington  could  come  back  to  America  to- 
day, he  would  write  another  farewell  letter — and  die. 

You  can't  get  a  man  to  eat  honey  that  contains  a  live 
bee — but  you  can  get  a  man  to  drink  whiskey  that  contains 
a  live  snake. 


JUST    A     WORD      PERSONAL 


A  CHICAGO  business  man,  known  the  country 
over  as  a  humanitarian ;  a  liberal  and  char- 
itable gentleman ;  one  of  the  most  successful  iii; 
his  chosen  work  in  the  United  States,  asked 
permission  to  read  the  manuscript  of  "My  Last 
Drink."  Here  is  his  written  opinion : 

A  LDERMAN,  I  have  read  your  experi- 
-^•*-  ience  with  the  demon  and  how  you 
conquered  him.  Publish  it  so  that  every  man 
and  woman  in  the  country  may  read  it. 
Send  your  story  out  into  the  world  as  a 
warning.  If  men  will  read  your  story,  and 
re-read  it,  until  it  is  written  on  their  mem- 
ories you  will  have  done  a  greater  service  for 
humanity  than  any  man  of  the  present 
generation;  more  for  mankind  than  any 
agency  or  any  thousand  men  have  done  in 
many,  many  years.  Give  it,  Alderman,  every 
word  of  your  history  and  experience.  Every 
employer  in  the  country  should  place  a  copy 
of  "My  Last  Drink"  in  the  hands  of  every  man 
in  his  employ. 

AND   SO   IT   IS  PRINTED! 


Only  when  facts  and  expositions  about  drink  are 
given  to  the  public  by  a  human  living  being — one  who  has 
traveled  the  terrible  alcoholic  road  to  ruin — do  they  have 
reality,  color,  warmth,  or  convincing  power. 


"If  I  ever  get  a  chance  to  hit  the  damnable  business  I 
will  hit  it  good  and  hard."— A.  Lincoln. 


CHAPTER    ONE 


My  First  Drink  and  My  Fall 


TJENRY  WARD  BEECHER  once  said: 

"The  man  who  is  worth  while  is  the  one 
who  bares  his  life  and  experience  for  the  benefit 
of  his  fellow  men." 

A  man  who  played  both  ends  of  the  game 
of  life  certainly  possesses  qualifications  as  a  judge. 
For  years  I  occupied  a  front  seat  on  the  infernal 
brink  of  drink. 

I  spare  myself  nothing  in  this  tragic  recital. 
It  is  not  made  in  a  boastful  manner,  but  in  a 
heart  full  of  humiliation  and  had  it  another  object 
but  warning  to  my  fellow  men,  would  shame  a 
man  to  his  grave. 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


Degraded?  Yes.  This  is  a  story  of  degrada- 
tion. Hence,  I  am  only  outlining,  hinting,  whis- 
pering, hoping  that  some  poor  human  being 
may  be  warned  and  saved  from  starting  on  a 
campaign  of  drink  that  will  end  in  wreck — wreck 
of  everything  that  is  kind,  sensitive,  human  and 
honorable. 

I  had  the  honor  of  enumerating  among  my 
friends,  Governor  Edward  F.  Dunne,  and  Charles 
S.  Deneen  of  Illinois,  Mayors  William  Hale 
Thompson,  Carter  H.  Harrison,  Fred  A.  Busse,  and 
nearly  all  of  the  leading  judges  in  the  Circuit, 
Superior  and  Municipal  Courts  of  Chicago ;  many 
of  the  leading  bankers  and  business  men  of 
Chicago  and  in  hundreds  of  cities  throughout  the 
United  States.  With  all  these  associations,  and 
connections  and  surroundings  that  any  man 
should  be  proud  of,  I  tottered  and  fell — a  hope- 
less victim  of  drink. 

I  had  more  opportunities  than  the  average 
man.  I  was  successful  in  business,  had  the  dis- 


A  whiskey  drinker  never  dies — he  is  dead  before  the  start. 
Thinkers  are  not  drinkers. 

10 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


tinction  of  being  a  Chicago  Alderman,  was  hon- 
ored with  other  public  offices,  was  a  delegate  to 
a  political  National  Convention.  I  had  wealth, 
excellent  health  and  most  substantial  prosperity. 
I  had  a  business  that  paid  me  annually  a  good 
many  thousands  of  dollars,  had  a  beautiful  home 
in  one  of  Chicago's  most  aristocratic  districts,  had 
automobiles,  servants,  and  all  the  good  things 
of  life  that  go  with  sobriety,  wealth,  refinement, 
ambition,  and  respect;  a  member  and  officer  in  a 
number  of  Chicago's  leading  social  and  commer- 
cial clubs,  a  Thirty-second  Degree  Mason,  a 
publisher  and  owner  of  one  of  America's  largest 
magazines ;  the  author  of  several  standard  works, 
a  happy  family  and  devoted  wife — all  swallowed 
up  in  the  whirlpool  of  drink.  I  drank  up  my 
prospects  and  fortune ;  I  drank  up  my  friendships, 
and  there  were  never  more  devoted  and  long 
suffering  friends.  I  drank  up  a  home — the  home 
of  my  wife  and  family — and  saw  them  turned 
penniless  into  the  street. 


A    saloon    thrives    on    widows'     tears,    mother's    heartaches 
and  starving  children. 

11 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


And  with  that  sight  in  my  mind  I  still  drank 
harder  and  harder,  brooding  over  the  troubles  I 
had  created  for  myself,  getting  deeper  in  the 
meshes  of  the  snake  day  by  day.  No  argument, 
restraint,  or  treatment,  could  stay  my  insatiable 
thirst  and  desire  for  drink — it  seemed  as  though 
only  death  could  win  the  battle  for  me. 

Drink  held  me  in  bondage.  I  was  not  my 
own  master.  I  was  a  helpless  victim,  being  held 
with  a  strangle  hold.  Try  as  I  would,  I  could 
not  escape  from  the  demon  alcohol.  He  pursued 
me  everywhere.  From  coast  to  coast  and  across 
the  ocean,  he  was  my  constant  companion.  I 
was  bound,  brain,  hand  and  foot.  How  should  I 
break  this  terrible  chain  binding  me  to  this  chariot 
of  destruction? 

Heart  and  head  refused  to  receive  the  ter- 
rible warning  handed  to  me  in  tremors,  sickness 
and  loss  of  health  and  all  worldly,  possessions — 
until  at  last  whiskey  won  its  fell  victory,  and  I 
was  whipped,  ruined  and  disgraced. 


A  boozer  may  fool  himself,  but  he  cannot  fool  nature. 
A  whiskey  smile  soon  turns  to  a  frown. 

12 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


Like  thousands  of  drinkers,  I  banked  on  my 
superior  will  power  and  resistance  to  prevent  me 
from  falling  to  the  bottom.  But  the  snake-hole 
was  open  and  down,  down  to  the  bottom  I 
dropped,  forced  into  poverty,  crime  and  prison. 
I  partook  freely  of  the  juice  proffered  by  the  ser- 
pent and  was  stung,  stung  nearly  to  death.  I 
sank  to  the  level  and  class  of  a  tramp.  Booze 
had  done  its  work,  and  left  me  a  mental  wreck. 

I  used  to  reason  that  the  other  fellow  was 
drinking  too  much  for  his  own  good  and  should 
let  up.  I  was  positive  I  was  all  right  and  could 
quit  drinking  anytime  I  wanted  to.  But  when  I 
tried  to  do  so  I  made  an  inglorious  failure. 

I  am  not  posing  as  a  horrible  example,  but 
as  a  living  example  of  what  can  be  accomplished 
when  a  man  just  resolves  to  quit  the  habit. 
Neither  am  I  a  reformer,  but  rather  an  informer 
to  those  that  are  following  the  path  I  did,  to 
inform  them  that  the  same  abyss  of  disaster  is 
awaiting  to  consume  them  unless  they  clamp 


A  corkscrew  is  straight  compared  with  the  average 
saloon  keeper. 

13 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


the  lid  on  drink  quickly  and  permanently. 
And  I  want  to  warn  every  drinking  man — a 
moderate,  occasional  or  periodical  drinker  who 
reads  these  lines — the  chances  are  100  to  1  that 
if  you  don't  quit  the  game  you  will  wake  up  some 
day  and  find  yourself  at  the  tail  end  of  the  pro- 
cession, the  same  as  I  did.  You  may  be  a  man  of 
delicate  sensibility,  of  lofty  purpose,  and  of  tower- 
ing intellect;  you  may  have  qualities  which,  un- 
tainted by  alcohol,  would  adorn  any  character, 
but  if  addicted  to  whiskey,  your  destruction  is 
certain. 

When  did  this  work  of  ruin  begin? 

I  acquired  the  drinking  habit  just  the  same 
as  thousands  of  others  have  and  are  acquiring  it 
today.  I  drank  whiskey  just  as  myriads  of 
men  do;  drank  and  thought  I  attended  to  busi- 
ness, prospered  for  a  time,  kept  my  health  and 
head  for  a  time,  provided  for  my  family,  was  a 
"good  fellow,"  and  easily  maintained  my  position 
in  the  community.  I  was  forming  an  awful  habit. 


The  best  substitute  for  the  saloon  is  the  home. 
Moderation  in  drinking  is  damnation  in  embryo. 

14 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


I  was  slipping  every  day.  I  didn't  realize  it.  My 
friends  did. 

My  first  step  in  drink  was  in  the  very  best 
drinking  places,  where  I  met  and  drank  daily  with 
well-groomed,  high-class,  respectable  gentlemen. 
With  these  "good"  companions  I  contracted  un- 
controllable habits  which  led  me  to  the  brink. 
When  a  shabbily  dressed  man  would  enter  a  bar 
room,  one  whom  I  had  known  in  former  years  as  a 
successful  man,  one  of  my  associates  would  say: 

"There's  Bill  Smith.  Five  years  ago  he  was  a 
successful  broker  in  LaSalle  Street.  Old  booze 
has  him  by  the  neck." 

We  passed  it  off  with  a  laugh  and  another 
drink,  feeling  cocksure  we  would  never  get  in  the 
condition  of  Bill  Smith.  Oh,  no!  But  nearly 
every  one  of  us  got  there. 

I  used  to  take  a  drink  at  the  club,  at  social 
gatherings,  at  political  blowouts,  weddings,  etc., 
and  all  places  where  the  alleged  spirit  of  good 
fellowship  presented  itself.  I  would  never  turn 


A  lazy  man  never  kicks  when  carrying  a  heavy  load  of  booze. 
An  eye  opener  closes  the  eyes. 

15 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


my  glass  down  when  the  champagne,  wine  and 
booze  came  along.  Always  had  it  right  side  up 
for  another  helping.  I  thought  I  was  having  a 
good  time.  Here  is  where  I  fooled  myself  as  all 
men  do  who  are  drinking — just  for  company's 
sake. 

My  descent  was  slow  at  first,  but  as  the 
appetite  grew  I  dropped  from  the  moderate  class 
to  the  rapid  and  confirmed  ranks. 

As  it  was  noised  among  my  friends  that  I 
was  drinking  too  much,  getting  to  be  a  drunkard 
in  fact,  at  first  my  self  respect  was  shocked  and  I 
felt  as  though  I  could  not  again  face  my  friends 
and  the  world  with  the  same  high  consciousness  of 
worth  and  manhood  as  before.  I  had  been  called 
a  drunkard.  I  began  to  believe  it.  One  feels  that 
he  is  in  imminent  danger  of  becoming  the  worst 
of  outcasts,  a  confirmed  drunkard,  a  burden  and 
disgrace  to  his  friends  and  community.  The 
physical  suffering  which  he  endures  is  nothing 
to  his  mental  torture.  It  seems  to  him  as  though 


Whiskey  is  the  monkey  wrench  in  the  machinery  of 
efficiency. 

16 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


every  person  whom  he  meets  is  aware  of  his 
feelings  and  disgrace,  and  look  upon  him  as  a 
ruined,  drunken,  degraded  man.  His  resolutions 
of  reformation  are  usually  like  ropes  of  sand. 
Mine  were ;  I  was  powerless  to  throw  the  dragon 
off. 

I  had  aspirations,  ambitions,  successes,  and 
wealth;  my  shambling  figure  once  walked  as 
proudly  as  any  man;  a  real  man  in  a  world  of 
men.  I  strangled  those  thoughts,  in  more  drink, 
that  I  might  not  be  tortured  any  more.  My  pas- 
sion for  drink  brought  additional  darkness,  and 
desolation.  Home,  family,  business  and  friends, 
swallowed  in  the  maelstrom  of  drink.  As  I  would 
walk  the  street  I  could  see  old  friends  pointing 
me  out  and  discussing  my  condition. 

Knowing  all  these  things  but  too  fully  steeped 
in  drink  to  realize,  I  kept  plunging  forward.  The 
demon  seemed  to  have  put  a  death  hold  on  me.  Try 
as  I  would  there  did  not  seem  to  be  any  avenue  of 
escape. 


Drinking  men  are   the  architects  of  their  own   misfortunes. 
What  is  a  chaser?     Ask  the  snake  in  the  whiskey. 

17 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


Often  a  friend  would  place  his  hand  on  my 
shoulder  and  say,  "Alderman,  you  are  hitting 
your  brain  against  a  bottle  a  little  too  often,  your 
face  shows  it,  your  actions  and  condition  show  it. 
Better  put  the  brakes  on  or  you  will  meet  with  an 
awful  collision  one  of  these  days." 

I  felt  somewhat  peeved  at  this  advice, 
feeling  like  all  drinking  men,  that  it  was  nobody's 
business  but  my  own;  that  I  was  all  right  and 
could  quit  anytime  I  wished.  I  didn't  quit,  I 
couldn't  quit.  I  was  anchored  soul,  body  and  mind 
to  the  monster. 

I  tried  and  struggled  and  resolved  many  times 
to  drink  no  more.  But  the  beast  was  only  scotched, 
not  caged.  My  strength  and  will  power  to  resist 
was  dead. 

Every  mental  faculty  was  unhinged  and  every 
physical  power  benumbed  and  my  whole  being 
was  rendered  helpless  and  degraded,  and  in  this 
condition  I  committed  crimes  and  acts  that  no 
sane  man  would  ever  dream  of. 


The  saloons  do  not  need  regulation,  they  need  strangulation. 
Booze  boycotts  the  brain. 

18 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


Drink  first  destroys  or  injures  what  is  most 
sensitive,  most  important,  the  brain.  No  man  who 
has  his  system  polluted  with  whiskey  can  be 
depended  upon  for  anything,  and  you  cannot 
trust  yourself,  you  are  drunk  at  the  top,  for  every 
drop  of  alcohol  goes  there  first.  Your  mind  and 
brain  are  clouded  by  alcoholic  paralysis.  From 
the  top  down — that  is  the  way  whiskey  works  on 
a  man;  it  ruins  first  what  is  highest  in  him — 
the  moral  qualities  so  carefully  acquired  in  the 
long  years  of  evolution.  It  is  the  most  fragile 
part  of  the  mental  machinery  that  is  first  impaired 
— that  which  has  been  recently  and  most  care- 
fully built  up  in  the  creation  of  character — the 
moral  part. 

A  man  is  a  fool  who  requires  to  be  taught  by 
bitter  experience  that  alcohol  is  a  monster  that 
will  destroy.  So  don't  experiment  with  it — take 
a  victim's  word  that  it  is  fatal  to  tempt  or  trifle 
with. 

At  last  whiskey  had  done  its  cruel  work.    I 


Columbus    discovered   America,    John    Barleycorn,    Personal 

Liberty. 

19 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


became  a  confirmed,  drunken  wretch,  forsaken,  it 
seemed,  by  God  and  man,  pitied  by  some,  de- 
spised by  others,  a  burden  and  disgrace  to  my 
family  and  friends  and  the  community.  I  finally 
became  a  wandering  outcast  in  the  world,  exper- 
iencing the  awful  happenings  that  are  the  life 
of  a  helpless,  hopeless  drunkard. 


20 


CHAPTER    TWO 


Dark  Side  of  a  Drinking  Man's  Life 


TV /I  Y  PASSION  for  drink  continued  to  grow  and 
*•**•  darkness  and  desolation  met  me  at  every 
turn. 

Imagining  myself  a  strong  willed  man  I  did 
not  think  of  the  possibility  of  defeat  from 
drink.  I  was  aware  that  whiskey  had  ruined  my 
home  and  prospects  and  blighted  many  a  brilliant 
brain.  I  was  not  as  strong  mentally  as  I  figured. 
This  was  the  weakness  of  my  equipment  for  the 
fight.  I  didn't  know  it  then  but  as  I  kept  drifting 
down  the  valley  of  gloom  and  despair  I  then 
realized  the  sadness  of  my  condition. 


An  old  man  of  60  with  white  hair  is  today  more  in  demand 
than  a  young  man  of  30  with  a  red  nose. 

21 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


The  hospitals  and  poor  houses  and  jails  are 
full  of  men  who  imagined  they  had  strong  minds 
and  argued  to  themselves  they  could  quit  any  time. 
Booze  is  a  sure  loser  for  any  man.  I  used  to  be 
one  of  the  wise  ones  who  would  say,  "I  can  quit 
it  any  time  I  want  to."  That's  a  joke.  About 
the  time  you  think  you  want  to  quit  you  are  about 
three-quarters  of  the  way  to  being  a  drunkard 
or  bum,  and  something  seems  to  say,  "What's  the 
use  of  stopping,  might  as  well  finish  the  course," 
and  your  finish  is  always  a  bad  one,  too.  Your 
appetite  is  increasing,  drink  is  gaining  on  you, 
and  gains  with  every  man  who  tampers  with  it. 

When  a  man  allows  his  alcoholic  appetite  to 
control  him,  he  is  turning  his  body  into  a  charnel 
house,  and  is  slowly  but  surely  approaching  an 
awful  chasm  of  distress,  and  digging  his  own  path- 
way down  to  hell. 

No  man  ever  made  the  desperate  struggle 
that  I  did.  The  attitude  of  the  world  was  cruel 
at  times.  I  figured  it  was  a  battle  no  man  could 


It  is  just  a  short  crooked  road  from  moderate  drinking 
to  drunkenness. 

22 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


win  and  that  thousands  have  lost.  The  liquid 
devil  seemed  to  be  unconquerable.  I  would  fight 
and  resolve  and  fall  and  go  down  to  defeat.  I 
had  learned  at  an  awful  cost  the  terrible  power 
of  whiskey. 

My  friends  used  to  say  to  me,  "Why  don't 
you  cut  it  out,  Alderman?"  I  was  powerless,  the 
habit  had  enslaved  me.  If  you  saw  a  soldier  with 
a  sword  thrust  through  his  body,  pinioning  him 
to  a  tree  would  these  same  people  say  to  him, 
"Why  don't  you  pull  it  out?  Why  don't  you  be 
free?" 

This  battle  to  be  free  from  the  curse  of  drink 
is  a  long,  cruel  and  silent  one  and  you  must 
do  your  fighting  alone,  too. 

One  bitter  cold  morning  I  stood  in  front  of 
the  Auditorium  Hotel,  watching  well-dressed, 
properly  nourished,  prosperous  men  leaving  for 
their  offices,  many  of  whom  were  my  associates 
and  friends  in  my  sober,  prosperous  days.  When 
I  saw  these  men,  for  a  moment  the  fact  came  to  my 


Putting    alcohol    in    your    system    is    like    throwing    gasoline 

on  a  flame. 

23 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


mind  that  I  once  was  like  them  and  I  had  aspira- 
tions and  successes,  and  ambitions  that  soared 
as  high  as  the  morning  star,  and  I  broke  and 
bruised  and  strangled  their  beautiful  wings  under 
the  blighting  curse  of  drink. 

Birth,  wealth,  power,  education  and  genius 
all  fall  before  this  horrible  vice — drink.  No  one 
is  immune  who  drinks;  age  is  no  barrier. 

I  was  maudlin  and  nervous  from  drink; 
hungry,  and  my  clothes  spotted  and  frazzled. 
The  sight  of  these  gentlemen  filled  me  with  bitter 
memories  and  remorse.  I  was  still  drifting 
towards  the  goal  of  destruction. 

And  there  I  stood,  a  homeless,  friendless 
tramp,  a  man  in  whom  every  good  impulse  was 
dead.  All,  all  swallowed  in  the  whirlpool  of 
drink,  a  shambling,  wobbly,  drunken  outcast.  I 
was  a  pitiable  spectacle. 

I  had  slept  the  night  before  on  the  cold, 
cement  floor  of  the  Harrison  Street  police  station. 
I  slept  as  a  tired  dog  sleeps,  a  dog  worn  out  with 


A  reputation   for  sobriety  is   today  a  letter  of  credit. 
A  little  drink  makes  a  big  man  shrink. 

24 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


a  fruitless  chase,  and  laid  there  drunk  as  one 
dead  on  the  icy,  hard  floor.  My  companions  were 
the  same  I  met  at  all  police  stations  throughout 
the  country,  tramps,  burglars,  pickpockets  and 
the  usual  class  picked  up  by  the  city  police  and 
"thrown  in"  for  the  night.  With  the  same  moan 
nearly  all  assigned  drink  as  the  contributing  cause 
of  their  downfall. 

Where  could  I  go?  What  could  I  do? 
There  was  no  friendly  hand  or  cheering  word  for 
me  any  more.  I  had  betrayed  and  saddened  all 
my  old  friends  and  acquaintances.  The  first 
thought  always  of  a  discouraged  drinking  man  is 
more  drink.  For  a  time  whiskey  fades  your 
trouble,  temporarily  your  bitter  thoughts  are 
hushed,  and  drowsy  forgetfulness  pervades  your 
brain  and  your  terrible  condition  is  forgotten  in 
stupefaction. 

I  shuffled  into  a  saloon  on  State  street, 
grabbed  a  few  mouthfuls  of  free  lunch,  staggered 
to  a  chair  and  in  a  few  minutes  was  dead  in  sleep. 

If  you  want  to  pluck  the  flower  of  sorrow  follow  the  booze 

route. 

25 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


Horrible  dreams  troubled  and  harassed  me. 
After  about  thirty  minutes  of  this  torture,  a  strong 
hand  had  me  by  the  shoulder  and  out  into  the 
street  the  "good"  saloon  keeper  threw  me,  minus 
my  hat,  which  a  "guest"  had  relieved  me  of 
while  I  slept. 

I  was  in  a  state  of  awful,  cruel  depression. 
I  felt  as  though  the  weight  of  the  world  was  upon 
me  and  bearing  me  down,  down.  I  wanted  some- 
thing to  lift  this  weight.  I  didn't  know  what  it 
was.  I  took  a  jolt  of  whiskey,  but  it  had  little  or 
no  effect  on  me  unless  it  was  to  make  me  feel  more 
miserable.  Upon  my  head  and  heart  and  brow 
was  the  remorseless  iron  cross  of  suffering.  Like 
a  treacherous  and  underhanded  foe  alcohol  sat 
enthroned. 

You  can  see  what  an  awful  battle  for  life 
confronts  a  whiskey  slave.  Whiskey  is  a  demon 
put  on  earth  by  the  devil  to  torture  the  souls  of 
men. 

There    is    something    unnatural    about    the 


It'*  a  short  road  from  good-fellowship  to  good-for- 
nothingness. 


26 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


person  who  can  look  upon  human  sorrow,  without 
being  himself  affected.  Even  in  my  helpless  con- 
dition I  did  what  little  I  could  to  assist  many  un- 
fortunates, although  I  was  as  bad  off  as  they  were. 

I  drifted  into  a  low  groggery  on  North  Clark 
street,  Chicago,  when  in  walked  a  bleared  eyed, 
unshaven  man  about  fifty  years  of  age,  clothed 
in  raf!gs  and  dirt.  With  trembling  hands  and 
voice  he  said: 

"Pard,  slip  me  a  jitney  for  a  brain  duster.  I 
must  have  a  (Jrink  or  I  will  die."  I  gave  the  un- 
fortunate man  a  nickel.  I  was  interested  in  him. 
One  could  see  he  had  been  a  man  in  his  day,  and 
after  his  drink  he  was  quite  voluble.  I  pried  into 
his  past. 

He  eyed  me  with  a  pathetic  look  and  arising 
from  a  beer  keg  on  which  he  was  seated  he  was 
indeed  a  study. 

And  there  he  stood  with  a  grace  and  dignity 
that  all  his  rags  and  dirt  could  not  obscure,  and 
without  any  prelude  he  said: 


Let  us  crush  these  booze  artists  in  human  slaughter. 
Booze  ruins  one  internally,  externally  and  eternally. 

27 


MY       LAST       DRINK 


"I  am  a  graduate  of  Yale.  Ever  hear  of 
Yale?  Splendid  educational  institution.  You'd 
never  believe  it  if  I  told  you,"  he  drawled.  "Some 
of  the  old  men  around  Chicago  remember  me.  I 
was  a  criminal  lawyer."  He  whispered  his  name, 
which  was  a  truly  honorable  one  until  drink 
gripped  him.  "Ten  years  ago  seems  a  long  time, 
but  it  wasn't  so  long  in  the  going.  Started  boozing 
accidentally.  Took  a  sniff  of  it  at  the  club  or  a 
social  function.  I  did  it,  though  I  knew  it  was 
wrong,  and  have  been  doing  it  ever  since.  To-day 
I  am  a  human  wreck,  my  end  is  near." 

He  plucked  nervously  at  his  coat,  straightened 
his  tie,  brushed  his  hand  across  his  face  and 
in  a  sorrowing  voice  slowly  said :  "Awful  nervous. 
Stuff  makes  you  nervous.  Leaps  through  your 
brain.  Sets  it  afire."  And  he  fell  over  in  a 
whiskey  fit  on  the  floor.  A  policeman  was  called ; 
the  "wagon"  came  rumbling  up  and  he  was  carted 
to  the  East  Chicago  Avenue  police  station,  and 
upon  arriving  there  was  dead.  It  was  a  sad  death. 


Watch  your  step — that  it  doesn't  lead  you  into  the  saloons. 
The  men   who  booze  are  the  men  who  lose. 

28 


MY       LAST      DRINK 


There  was  no  comfort  on  that  dying  pillow.  No 
sweet  repose.  The  gentle  hand  of  mother,  wife, 
or  daughter  was  missing.  No  voice  of  consolation 
or  friendship.  Dying  alone  and  like  a  dog. 

There  is  a  sermon  in  this  man's  life,  Mr. 
Drinker ! 

Notwithstanding  this  terrible  lesson  I  con- 
tinued to  drink  and  drift.  My  companions  were 
that  great  army  of  whiskey  soaked  wretches, 
thousands  of  whom  had  been  respectable  and 
honored  men  until  booze  seduced  them,  always 
circulating  between  the  barrel  houses,  cheap 
lodging  houses,  saloons,  police  stations,  jails, 
hospitals  and  poor  house. 

There  was  nothing  too  dangerous  for  me  to 
attempt  to  secure  money  to  appease  my  burning 
and  horrible  thirst  for  whiskey.  I  must  have 
drink.  Wandering  from  city  to  city,  state  to  state, 
I  was  insane  and  aimless  in  my  thoughts,  stupid 
and  benumbed  from  drink  and  kept  on  wandering, 
wandering,  and  drinking,  drinking.  A  period  in 


A  saloon  keeper's  friendship  is  tied  with  a  rope  of  sand. 
Think  before  you  drink. 

29 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


jail  in  Richmond,  Va.,  Portland,  Maine,  or  San 
Diego,  Cal.,  or  of  any  other  twenty-five  cities  I 
could  name,  had  no  deterring  effect.  I  would 
make  resolutions,  however,  but  I  was  chained  to 
the  brute  and  it  seemed  as  though  no  human  ef- 
fort could  break  the  fetters. 

The  mind  of  a  strong  man  soon  becomes 
palsied  from  drink.  His  brain  weakens,  his  char- 
acter falls,  his  judgment  is  worthless  and  his  life 
useless,  and  any  man  that  drinks  is  certainly 
taking  a  long  chance  on  being  trapped. 

It  seems  unbelievable,  this  hideous  thing 
which  had  happened  to  me.  I  slowly  recalled  the 
steps  by  which  I  had  arrived  at  this  disaster.  I 
was  not  so  far  gone  but  what  I  could  remember 
some  things,  but  past  performances  did  not  appeal 
to  me.  Nothing  appealed  to  me  but  drink. 

I  soon  discovered  that  it  was  not  the  barrel 
houses,  cheap  saloons  and  groggeries  and  slums 
and  rookeries  of  alcoholism  that  do  the  worst 
work.  These  places  are  only  way  stations  on  the 


A  glass  of  booze  is  a  ticket  in  the  lottery  of  death. 
Good  intentions  never  enter  saloon  doors. 

30 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


road  to  death.  Where  did  that  bloated,  ulcerous, 
wheezing  wretch  that  comes  hobbling  and  stag- 
gering out  of  a  barrel  house,  get  his  habit  started? 
Certainly  not  in  a  barrel  house,  but  at  one  of  the 
so-called  respectable  saloons,  restaurants,  clubs  or 
the  bar  of  a  leading  hotel. 

"Is  a  man  insane  when  he  is  drinking?" 
Yes,  and  it  is  a  strange  and  weird  insanity.  When 
I  was  drinking  I  knew  I  was  myself,  but  had  no 
power  to  be  myself.  This  appears  paradoxical 
but  it  is  true.  I  was  occasionally  rational  and 
lucid  in  act  and  speech,  but  it  was  not  the  ration- 
ality and  lucidity  of  my  real  self,  it  was  always 
the  conduct  of  a  personality  the  opposite  to  my 
own. 

Whiskey  is  a  murderer,  and  the  law  should 
treat  it  as  a  deadly  poison,  and  treat  those  who 
make  it  and  sell  it,  after  the  passage  of  suitable 
laws,  as  they  would  treat  any  other  dealer  in  a 
poisonous,  murderous  agency.  In  every  foot  of 
the  United  States  territory  whiskey  should  be 


The  only  man  in  the  universe  that  can  get  full  and  keep  his 
head  with  him  is  the  man  in  the  moon. 

31 


MY       LAST      DRINK 


declared  by  federal  law,  by  state  law  and  by 
declaration  of  the  interstate  commerce  authorities 
a  poison,  and  its  sale  a  crime. 

My  saddest  experiences  in   grappling  with 
drink  were  yet  to  come. 


32 


CHAPTER    THREE 
Why  Men  Drink 


r\RINKING  baffles  us,  confounds  us,  shames  us 
*^  and  mocks  us  at  every  point.  It  outwits  the 
man  of  business  and  the  worker. 

Why  men  drink?  Any  man  that  drinks  can 
assign  many  reasons,  not  one  of  which  is  logical 
or  tenable.  I  have  known  thousands  of  really 
good  men  who,  discouraged  and  badgered, 
and  pressed  in  their  business  have  taken  away 
the  keen  vitality  of  their  life  by  resorting  to  the 
cup  and  this  habit  thus  formed  finally  led  to  their 
downfall.  Is  not  this  going  on  all  the  time  ?  Are 
there  not  hundreds  and  thousands  of  cases,  almost 


Which  will  you  choose — the  Field  of  Honor  or  the 
Potter's  Field. 


33 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


in  our  very  midst,  of  persons  who  have  in  some 
such  way  become  victims  of  this  terrible  scourge  ? 
No  sane  man  should  drink  to  drown  trouble.  It 
cannot  be  done.  You  are  simply  chaining  failure 
to  your  life-  I  did.  I  discovered  that  a  clear  brain 
and  sober  body  will  overcome  trouble  quicker 
than  booze.  In  some  cases  whiskey  creates  an 
increased  brilliancy  at  first,  but  it  is  a  temporary 
and  suicidal  flash  only,  burning  out  swiftly  into 
the  ashes  of  an  utter  ruin.  I  need  not  repeat  to 
any  reader  the  names  of  men,  once  renowned  for 
intellectual  attainments,  but  afterward  degraded 
by  strong  drink  to  the  stupidity  and  loathsomeness 
of  a  sot. 

Never  delude  yourself  that  you  need  a  bracer. 
The  use  of  a  bracer  is  dead  wrong.  Bracers 
destroy  the  warning  signals  of  nature  to  tired, 
exhausted  men.  Bracers  abolish  fatigue  for  the 
moment,  but  fatigue  warns  the  body  that  rest  and 
recreation  are  necessary.  This  bracing  drink  is 
ofttimes  the  beginning  of  an  awful  end.  I 


A  man  can  go  through  mercantile  bankruptcy  several  times 
— booze  bankruptcy  but  once. 

34 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


know  that  whiskey  poisons  and  shortens  life. 
Whiskey  does  not  give  strength.  I  was 
deluded  into  that  belief  to  my  awful  sorrow.  I 
felt  stronger  for  the  moment  after  taking  a  drink 
but  it  was  simply  temporary  delusion.  I  had 
irritation,  and  aggravation,  not  strength,  and  I 
was  unwittingly  consuming  one  day  the  capital 
for  the  next.  I  was  running  in  debt  to  nature. 

It  is  a  foolish  sociability,  the  desire  for  show- 
ing friendship  and  being  agreeable  that  influences 
many  men  to  drink  whiskey.  It  is  not  for  any 
good  it  is  going  to  do  them  or  any  particular  happi- 
ness that  it  affords,  but  it  is  this  sociability.  Man 
is  a  sociable  being  and  he  looks  for  some  fellow 
man  in  discussing  questions  of  the  day,  hia 
troubles,  and  things  of  that  sort,  but  he  can  culti- 
vate a  taste  for  something  besides  whiskey — 
something  that  will  not  enslave  and  ruin. 

As  a  rule  a  man  drinks  to  excess  with  a  defi- 
nite end  in  view — principally  that  he  may  acquire 
power  to  be  something  more  than  he  naturally  is. 


A  saloon  keeper  floats  the  American  flag  and  hand* 
you  a  shroud. 

35 


MY       LAST       DRINK 


He  is  depressed,  and  he  wants  to  be  cheerful ;  he 
is  timid  and  he  desires  to  be  brave;  he  is  going 
to  "touch"  someone  and  needs  a  little  more  steam 
and  nerve ;  he  is  cold  and  wishes  to  be  warm ;  he 
is  feeble  in  mind  and  body  and  wants  the  world 
to  look  brighter — and  quickly,  too. 

One  of  the  many  reasons  men  cling  to  alco- 
holic drinks  is  the  belief  in  their  value  for  nour- 
ishment and  strength.  The  moment  these  idols 
fall  to  the  ground  the  better  for  them.  Public 
schools  should  universally  teach  upon  this  most 
important  subject. 

How  can  whiskey  drown  trouble  when  it  will 
not  drown  a  snake? 

Mental  depression  and  nervousness  caused 
by  overwork  drives  many  men  to  try  whiskey. 
The  higher  the  nervous  strain,  once  the  habit  is 
formed,  the  more  whiskey  is  needed  and  de- 
manded. You  are  then  in  the  drunkard  class,  but 
don't  realize  it.  You  don't  believe  it;  I  didn't 
either.  But  when  I  made  up  my  mind  to  quit  I 


Battling  with  booze  is  like  trying  to  corner  the  wind. 
A  saloon  keeper  is  simply  a  stoker  for  the  devil. 

36 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


didn't  have  any  mind,  no  will  power,  no  power  of 
resistance.  I  was  gone.  A  little  rest,  recrea- 
tion, or  sleep  is  better  than  all  the  stimulant  in  the 
world  for  a  man  who  feels  run  down.  This 
imaginary  physical  condition  has  started  thou- 
sands of  men  on  the  road  to  ruin.  Once  you  fool 
with  drink  you  are  liable  to  find  the  habit  fixed 
before  you  are  aware  of  it. 

Thousands  of  men  drink  for  an  imaginary 
weakness  of  the  stomach,  and  a  faintness  and 
goneness,  especially  when  they  arise  in  the  morn- 
ing. Others  imagine  whiskey  aids  digestion,  when 
as  a  matter  of  fact  it  retards  it.  But  the  most 
nonsensical  habit  of  all  is  the  poisonous  "night 
cap"  before  retiring.  Never  take  this  night  drink 
to  aid  tired  nerves  and  produce  sleep,  which  is  a 
cruel  fallacy. 

The  solid  mass  of  men  who  make  up  the  aris- 
tocratic clubs  of  all  cities  never  drink  to  get 
drunk  but  I  have  seen  thousands  of  them 
land  in  the  "has-been"  class.  Such  men  work  at 


The  race  today  is  not  for  the  swiftest  but  for  the  soberest. 
Safety  first  means  sober  first. 

37 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


high  pressure,  hard  and  fast  in  business  hours; 
and  they  continue  to  drink  in  order  to  work 
harder,  always  feeling  that  they  are  too  wise  and 
strong  headed  to  become  a  victim  of  drink,  but 
some  day  they  fall,  and  I  found  all  cities  full  of 
broken  down  club  men  and  "brilliants,"  and  pro- 
fessional men,  acting  as  night  cashiers  in  lunch 
rooms,  watchmen,  doortenders,  and  other  light 
positions,  and  always  bent  on  telling  you  who  they 
know  and  of  their  former  greatness.  The  only 
man  they  knew  real  well  was  John  Barleycorn. 

Any  man  who  attempts  to  "drown  his  sorrows 
in  the  flowing  bowl"  is  doomed  from  the  start. 

When  a  man  first  starts  out  to  be  a  "regular 
fellow,"  and  has  money  and  health  and  position, 
a  little  stimulant  gives  him  a  fictitious  value  of  his 
greatness  and  importance.  He  is  charmed  and 
delighted  when  he  plunges  into  a  grandly 
equipped,  gorgeous  and  well-lighted  saloon.  He 
is  pleased  with  the  pleasant  smile  and  welcome 
of  the  proprietor.  The  handy  third  rail  for  your 


The  public  school  is  the  foundation  of  life;    the  public 
saloon    is    the    foundation    of   death. 

38 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


foot,  the  mahogany  bar  for  your  service  and  the 
alleged  hearty  good  fellowship  surroundings 
drive  away  all  care  and  thought  of  the  morrow, 
all  of  which  is  the  first  degree  in  the  drama  of 

destruction. 

i 

A  little  whiskey  with  your  friends  at  this 
time  and  place,  you  reason,  is  not  so  bad.  As  time 
goes  on  you  require  more  drink,  the  habit  is  form- 
ing and  finally,  taking  too  much  of  the  poison, 
you  are  not  wanted  in  one  of  the  fine  drinking 
places, — the  barrel  house  for  yours. 

Come  back  to  the  smiling  bartender  when 
you  are  broke,  unshaven  and  unkempt,  and  ask 
for  a  drink,  "just  for  old  time's  sake."  That 
smile  has  turned  to  a  frown  and  a  refusal.  The 
saloonkeeper  is  smiling  and  breaking  in  a  new 
batch  of  victims.  All  drinking  men  finally  go  the 
same  route  and  land  at  the  same  station — Death. 

I  have  been  in  splendid  whiskey  places,  with 
liveried  bartenders,  masterpieces  of  painting  on 
the  wall,  furnishings,  rugs,  and  divans,  and  loung- 


It  is  only  a.  short  life  from  the  Blackstone  to  the  Bridewell. 
Whiskey   is   not   included  in   the   scheme   of  life. 

39 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


ing  chairs  not  equalled  in  a  Turkish  harem,  where 
you  could  loll  and  loaf  and  fill  your  hide  with 
poison.  The  grandeur  of  the  surroundings 
dignifies  you  while  the  whiskey  stupefies  you. 
This  life  is  a  short  and  merry  one  and  lack  of 
money  pushes  you  down  the  scale.  I  have  drunk 
champagne  in  the  Blackstone,  squirrel  booze  in  a 
barrel  house  and  finally  wound  up  on  soup  in  the 
Bridewell.  Which  do  you  suppose  I  enjoyed  the 
most? 

Drunkenness  is  certainly  the  most  peculiar 
of  all  vices.  A  man  can  gamble  and  still  make 
money.  He  can  live  an  unmoral  life  and  do  the 
same ;  but  if  he  is  habitually  intoxicated  he  loses 
the  power  of  self-support,  and,  of  course,  the 
power  of  providing  for  his  family.  This  is  the 
reason  why  society  interferes,  and  has  the  right 
to  interfere,  with  the  custom  of  drinking.  The 
drink  evil  is  a  handicap  for  any  race  to  carry,  just 
as  tuberculosis  or  yellow  fever  are  handicaps.  It 
impairs  vitality,  reduces  efficiency,  energy, 


There  are   sixty   different   kinds    of   religious    creeds    in    the 
United  States,  but  only  one  kind  of  saloon. 

40 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


initiative  and  working  power.  Any  man  who 
tries  to  cheat  himself  in  playing  the  game  of  life 
will  always  find  conditions  stacked  against  him. 
Whiskey  disappoints  and  betrays  all  but  those 
who  deliberately  seek  death  for  body  and  mind. 

Alcohol  is  the  drunkard's  hangman,  its  aid 
is  treacherous,  it  betrays  and  depraves  him.  He 
struts  for  a  while  and  glorifies  himself  on  whiskey's 
prowess  which  he  arrogates  as  his  own;  but  his 
self  deception  is  patent,  and  is  presently  exposed. 
In  short,  excitement  from  drink  imposes  upon  a 
man  a  selfhood  which  is  not  his  own,  but  a  false 
and  monstrous  exaggeration  of  it.  At  first  it 
seems  to  give  him  strength  of  faculty  beyond  his 
normal,  but  rapidly  it  hurries  him  into  folly  and 
danger  and  ends  by  sousing  him  ignobly  and 
helplessly  in  the  gutter. 

The  similarity  of  drunkenness  to  insanity  or 
madness  has  always  been  noticed ;  it  dilates  a  good 
man  into  a  monster — and  then  an  alcoholic  im- 
becile. Men  filled  with  liquor  have  been  known 


Booze  is  the  misery  of  many  for  the  gain  of  a  few. 
A  whiskey  blossom  on  your  nose  blooms  the  year  'round. 

41 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


to  commit  all  the  crimes  in  the  calendar  without 
being  properly  conscious  of  the  fact.  Insanity 
could  do  no  more. 

Treating  is  another  bad  feature  of  the  drink- 
ing habit.  If  you  met  a  friend  in  a  grocery  store 
and  he  purchased  a  pound  of  sugar  he  would  not 
ask  you  to  step  up  and  have  a  pound.  If  you  are 
in  a  saloon  and  the  same  friend  comes  in  to  buy 
a  drink  he  will  ask  you  to  have  something  with 
him.  If  treating  were  abolished  in  the  United 
States  it  would  be  a  step  in  the  right  direction. 
That  is  to  say,  when  a  person  wishes  to  take  a 
drink  of  intoxicating  liquor  he  may  not  invite  a 
friend  to  drink  with  him.  Thousands  of  men 
would  be  unable  to  secure  a  drink  if  it  were  not 
for  some  acquaintance  treating  them.  I  have 
been  broke  for  weeks,  in  every  section  of  the 
United  States,  but  drinks  were  always  plenty, 
through  treating. 

In  the  United  States  one  or  two  common- 
wealths that  have  not  banished  the  saloon  have 


A  street  car  say*: — "Pay  as  you  enter."     A  saloon, 
"Die  as  you  enter." 

42 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


sought  to  destroy  the  treating  habit  by  passing 
laws  against  it.  But  it  seems  to  be  difficult  to  up- 
hold enactments  of  that  sort. 

The  bane  of  all  drink  holes  is  this  miserable 
custom — the  saloon  etiquette  of  treating.  "I'm 
just  going  to  take  a  drink,  won't  you  join  me?" 
This  game  is  fostered  and  systematically  nursed 
by  all  saloon  keepers  in  the  so-called  respectable 
saloon  as  well  as  the  lowest  groggery — and  every 
drinking  man  knows  what  I  say  is  true.  Saloon 
treating  is  a  wicked  and  pernicious  habit  and 
should  be  blotted  out  of  every  community. 

A  strict  and  enforced  anti-treating  law  would 
cause  thousands  of  saloons  to  cease  business. 


43 


CHAPTER    FOUR 


The     Moderate    Drinker 


|V  /[  ODERATE  drinking  is  the  father  of  all  drunk- 
**•*•  enness.  All  experience  declares  its  truth. 
The  moderate  consumers  of  intoxicating  drinks 
are  the  chief  agents  in  promoting  and  perpetuating 
drunkenness.  Moderate  drinking  is  the  begin- 
ning of  that  inclined  plane  which  will  slide  you 
easily  to  destruction.  It  seems  pleasant  and  safe 
at  first,  but  the  end  will  be  demoralizing.  Take 
a  former  moderate  drinking  victim's  word  for  that. 
The  moderate  drinker  is  the  great  stumbling 
block  to  sobriety.  It  is  not  the  drunkard  in  the 
gutter  that  a  young  man  has  in  his  mind  when  he 


Americans  must  kill  King  Alcohol,  or  he  will  kill  them. 
Booze  is  the  best  stranger  in  the  world. 

44 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


takes  his  first  drink.  It  is  his  respectable  mod- 
erate drinking  neighbor.  He  reasons  what  harm 
can  there  be  in  drinking  when  such  men  drink 
booze  and  beer  at  high  class  bars  and  clubs  and 
even  under  their  own  roof.  The  higher  a  man 
stands  in  a  community  the  greater  is  his  influence 
either  for  good  or  evil. 

There  are  thousands  upon  thousands  who 
are  weak,  of  excitable  temperament,  easily 
tempted,  strong  passioned,  and  to  whom  modera- 
tion in  the  use  of  alcoholic  stimulant  as  a  beverage 
almost  inevitably  lead  to  dissipation  and  ruin. 

Intemperance  is  supported  and  perpetuated 
by  the  moderate  drinker.  The  moderate  drinker 
of  to-day  is  the  outcast  of  the  next  decade.  That 
continued  tippling  will  create  an  appetite  and  a 
mastery  that  no  man  can  easily  shake  off. 

Ask  any  man  who  has  been  a  slave  to  drink 
where  the  evil  first  began.  He  will  tell  you,  of 
course,  in  his  first  glass.  Always  in  the  moderate 
use  of  it.  Didn't  take  much  at  first,  didn't  care 


A  saloon  sign,   "Workingmen's  Home,"  should  be 
"Workingmen's  Morgue." 

45 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


anything  about  it.  Could  stop  it  any  time  he 
wished.  Always  boasting  of  his  vain  confidence 
of  being  able  to  control  his  appetite  and  to  stop 
just  at  the  proper  time.  But  in  the  booze  there 
was  an  adder,  unseen  and  shifty,  that  stung  the 
moderate  drinker,  that  forced  him  into  unwilling 
excesses.  Any  man  that  trifles  with  booze  is 
liable  to  be  stung  to  death  as  it  has  stung  millions. 

The  victims  from  moderate  drinkers  are 
selected  from  the  most  promising,  generous,  social, 
and  affectionate  of  our  business  men.  Genius, 
education,  family,  profession,  friends,  furnish  no 
abiding  obstacle  or  sure  defense.  When  the  de- 
grading appetite  has  been  formed  and  whetted, 
it  bursts  through  all  these  bonds.  The  noblest  and 
most  cherished  sons  of  our  best  connections  are 
here  cast  to  perish  with  the  vilest  and  the  basest 
of  mankind. 

I  have  met  socalled  high-class  men  at  the 
most  pretentious  drinking  places  in  all  parts  of  the 
country  licking  up  the  poison  "only  in  modera- 


Public   opinion  suppressed   firecrackers,  and  public   opinion 
will  suppress  fire  water. 

46 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


tion."  Hundreds  of  these  men  are  models  of 
morality,  respectability,  and  piety  in  the  world  of 
business.  They  know  the  tendency  of  appetite. 
Know  how  the  love  for  strong  drink  usually  in- 
creases until  the  moderate  sip  becomes  a  regular 
beverage  and  the  small  glass  is  exchanged  for  a 
larger  one  until  the  taste  becomes  a  fixed  habit 
and  the  moderate  drinker  is  transformed  into  a 
toper,  and  the  toper  into  a  drunken  sot. 

So-called  respectable  moderate  drinkers  who 
drink  at  the  onyx  bars  do  not  believe  that  any 
considerable  number  of  men  who  are  drunk  are 
served  with  drinks  in  saloons.  In  the  high-class, 
expensively  equipped  cafes,  and  saloons,  sober 
bartenders,  sober  cashiers,  sober  managers,  and 
sober  porters  usually  refuse  to  serve  drinks  to 
drunks  or  to  poorly  dressed,  down-and-out  appear- 
ing persons;  they  want  the  money  just  the  same, 
but  some  high  browed,  moderate  drinker,  who  is 
a  good  spender  would  object  to  their  company. 
If  you  are  well  groomed  you  can  go  to  the  best 


If  George  Washington  could  come  back  to  America  today 
he  would  write  another  farewell  letter — and  die. 

47 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


bar  in  the  world  and  if  your  looks,  speech  or 
action  indicate  you  have  been  drinking,  that's 
no  hindrance,  if  you've  got  .the  coin.  But  in 
alleged  respectable  saloons,  noisy  souses,  sleepers, 
loungers,  or  pan-handlers  are  not  allowed  to  hang 
around  unless  they  are  known  to  the  management. 
The  jails,  bridewells,  houses  of  correction,  peni- 
tentiaries, state  prisons,  pens,  asylums,  hospitals, 
and  reformatories  have  many  guests  to-day  that  a 
few  years  back  were  hail  fellows  well  met,  just 
moderate  drinkers,  at  the  leading  bars,  cafes, 
clubs,  and  hotels  —  pitiful,  dying,  miserable 
wretches. 

I  met  in  New  Orleans,  La.,  a  man  well-known 
throughout  the  south,  a  former  banker  with  un- 
limited wealth,  and  powerful  business  connections, 
broken  in  health  and  fortune  and  a  social  outcast. 
He  was  a  complete  alcoholic  wreck.  Every  one 
who  had  known  him  in  his  successful  days  avoided 
and  shunned  him.  I  met  him  in  a  cheap  saloon, 
begging  and  crying  for  "just  one  more  drink." 


Champagne  bottle  to  black  bottle  is  within  easy  reach. 
A  saloon  is  the  hell  gate  on  the  road  to  success. 

48 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


I  was  interested  in  the  man  after  learning  of 
his  former  standing  in  the  community.  He  told 
me  he  started  in  as  a  moderate  drinker,  just  one 
or  two  drinks  a  day.  The  habit  almost  uncon- 
sciously grew  on  him.  Slight  business  reverses 
came.  Instead  of  battling  them  with  a  clear  head 
he  took  more  drink.  In  a  trembling  voice  and  a 
staggering  gait,  bent  and  decrepit,  he  walked  to 
a  chair  and  with  effort  seating  himself,  said : 

"Ten  years  ago  I  was  just  a  moderate  drinker. 
But  that  habit  caused  my  downfall.  When  I  had 
my  first  run  of  hard  luck,"  he  said,  "I  turned  to 
whiskey.  I  wanted  to  feel  good  again.  Whiskey 
does  it  for  a  while.  It  makes  you  feel  that  you're 
a  fine  fellow  and  that  you'd  be  a  millionaire  if  you 
could  only  get  what  was  coming  to  you.  What  a 
warning  my  condition  ought  to  be  to  my  whiskey 
drinking  acquaintances.  Whiskey  made  me 
forget  my  troubles,  but  it  also  made  me  forget  my 
ambitions.  It  was  my  undoing.  Whiskey  has 
robbed  me  of  home,  family,  wealth,  health,  posi- 


Some    men's    idea    of   pleasure    is    to    do    things    that    bring 
them   misery. 

49 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


tion,  character,  business,  friends,  self  respect,  and 
everything  but  life  itself.  It  makes  the  world  look 
brighter  for  a  little  while.  When  I  started  to  climb 
up  again  I  found  that  I  had  lost  my  punch.  That 
made  me  feel  bad,  and  I  went  back  to  whiskey 
to  feel  good  again." 

"And  there  you  are!"  he  said,  "Down  and 
out." 

"Why  don't  you  quit?"  I  asked. 

"Forget  it ;  you  can't  quit  when  you  get  where 
I  am,"  and  with  a  pitying  look  and  as  plaintive 
voice  as  man  ever  heard,  he  slowly  continued; 
"I  am  waiting  to  reach  one  more  bar,  where  I 
will  not  plead  for  drink  but  mercy.  I  know  my 
end  is  near." 

And  if  Mr.  Moderate  Drinker  doesn't  take  a 
quick  inventory  of  the  condition  he  is  drifting  to 
it  will  not  be  many  years  before  he  will  be  unable 
to  stem  the  tide  that  is  bound  to  overwhelm  him. 

When  the  testing  time  comes  the  moderate 
drinker  is  always  found  wanting.  The  drink  habit 


The  evil  that  saloon  keepers  do  lives  after  them. 
A  boozer  has  a  dent  in  his  brain. 


50 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


has  grown  unconsciously  upon  him.  He  hesitates 
resolves,  and  then  falls.  He  is  now  in  the  second 
degree  of  a  drunkard's  life.  He  is  easily  and 
quickly  initiated  in  the  third  and  final  degree, 
a  lost  man. 

There  is  no  such  other  one  source  of  woe 
and  crime  in  the  world  as  the  excessive  indulgence 
in  alcoholic  drink.  And  the  excess  of  indulgence 
comes  in  a  vast  majority  of  cases  from  drinking 
in  moderation.  There  is  that  in  the  very  nature 
of  alcohol  that  tends  to  excite  thirst  for  deeper 
draughts  of  it.  If  we  stop  the  moderation,  we 
are  sure  of  arresting  a  large  amount  of  the  excess. 

Now  that  business  men  of  the  country — cold- 
blooded, unsentimental,  mathematical,  rigidly 
scientific — have  stepped  in  and  told  their  employ- 
e^s  that  drinking  men  are  not  wanted,  the  mod- 
erate, occasional,  periodical  and  habitual  drinker 
is  waking  up  and  taking  notice.  The  Illinois 
Steel  Company  in  South  Chicago  have  erected  an 
immense  electric  sign  over  the  entrance  to  their 


Don't  go  to  the  capitals  of  Europe  -to  see  old  ruins.      Just 
take  a  walk  through  the  streets  of  any  American  city. 

51 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


works  reading:  "Did  Booze  Ever  Do  You  Any 
Good?" 

Of  course  those  who  have  followed  medical 
and  scientific  progress  during  the  past  few  years 
and  those  who  have  interested  themselves  in  the 
new  science  of  human  efficiency,  know  why  big 
business,  railroad  and  commercial  organizations 
are  taking  this  stand.  But  does  it  not  seem 
strange  that  these  marchers  behind  the  booze 
banner  should  so  willfully  close  their  eyes  to  the 
changed  attitude  of  nearly  all  employers  of  help, 
the  men  who  heretofore  have  commanded  their 
willing  subservience! 

Can't  they  see  that  nearly  all  business  houses 
already  have  broken  with  booze?  The  man  who 
drinks  is  putting  a  burdensome  mortgage  on  his 
future.  Business  don't  want  him,  society  won't 
have  him  and  his  end  is  not  difficult  to  predict. 

The  drinking  man,  moderate  or  otherwise, 
nowadays,  soon  finds  his  credit  gone,  efficiency  and 
economy  spoiled,  ability  and  industry  squandered, 


The  monarchy  of  King  Alcohol  seems   to  be  turning  into  a 
dry  republic. 

52 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


honesty  impaired  and  confidence  of  friends  for- 
feited. They  soon  become  fit  only  for  the  most 
menial  positions  in  life. 

Whiskey  cheats  and  marches  under  false 
colors.  It  attacks  the  old  and  the  young,  and 
knows  no  rules  of  warfare.  I  want  to  tell  the 
young  man  who  thinks  he  can  "take  whiskey  or 
leave  it  alone"  or  drink  in  moderation,  that  what 
he  says  is  perfectly  true.  He  can  take  it  or  leave 
it  alone.  But  if  he  takes  it  he  will  probably  find 
that  the  time  will  come  he  can't  leave  it  alone.  I 
found  this  to  be  true  in  my  case. 

A  man  that  drinks  is  always  behind  in  the 
procession  of  life.  He  is  carrying  too  heavy  a 
handicap. 

Nature  is  the  great  law  maker  and  it  does 
not  require  a  detective  to  find  the  man  who  vio- 
lates her  laws.  The  world  is  what  it  is  and  he 
who  disdains  to  pursue  the  sober,  honest  paths 
that  lead  to  worldly  success  and  honor,  is  dedi- 
cated to  poverty  and  disgrace. 


Decoration   Day    for  old   soldiers,   Desecration  D«y   for 
old  soaks. 

53 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


Could  the  man  who  today  is  only  a  moderate 
drinker,  be  induced  to  take  an  inventory  of  himself 
and  look  carefully  into  my  experience  and  be  made 
to  understand  what  a  dreary  thing  it  is  when  a 
man  shall  feel  himself  going  down  a  precipice  with 
open  eyes  and  a  passive  will — to  see  his  destruc- 
tion and  have  no  will  power  to  stop  it,  and  yet  to 
know  he  is  himself  to  blame,  to  know  that  all 
goodness  has  left  him,  and  yet  not  to  be  able  to 
forget  a  time  when  it  was  otherwise — just  brood- 
ing over  the  piteous  spectacle  of  his  own  self  ruin, 
I  believe  he  would  stop  his  half  formed  habit  at 
once. 

The  history  of  alcoholism  presents  a  tragedy, 
the  first  act  begins  with  a  moderate  use  of  the 
poison  and  the  second  and  last  act  finds  you  a 
complete  victim,  and  if  you  escape  living  a  life 
of  drunkenness,  vagabondism  and  crime  you  are 
indeed  lucky. 


54 


CHAPTER    FIVE 

Experience    With    Saloons    and    Saloon    Keepers 


ON'T  forget,  young  man,  that  when  you  enter 
a  drinking  place  and  the  saloon  keeper 
smiles  and  welcomes  you  and  gives  you  a  hearty 
handshake,  that  the  claw  of  the  tiger  can  always 
be  felt  in  the  grip. 

In  a  wide  and  variegated  experience  in 
saloons,  reaching  from  ocean  to  ocean,  and  from 
Canada  to  Mexico,  a  fact  that  stands  out  most 
prominently  with  me  is  the  sameness  of  men  and 
ideas  of  saloon  keepers,  a  hard,  listless,  unfeeling 
lot,  that  once  in  a  while  perform  some  little  act 
of  generosity,  like  giving  you  a  drink  or  car 


You  don't  find  comfort  or  prosperity  in  the  home  of  a 
booze  fighter. 

55 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


fare,  and  then  imagine  they  are  generous  and 
good  fellows.  That's  all  it  is — imagination. 

There  is  plenty  of  artificial  good  fellowship 
in  a  saloon  keeper  when  a  man  spends  money  or 
a  live  one  drops  in.  I  recollect  a  Chicago  physi- 
cian spending  a  Hundred  and  Fifty  Dollars  at  a 
Dearborn  street  bar  one  night  and  heard  the 
saloon  keeper  in  a  gruff  and  villainous  manner 
refuse  him  a  drink  next  morning  when  he  was 
suffering  for  it. 

.The  men  that  own  gin  mills  are  different 
from  grocers  and  other  tradesmen  around  them. 
They  are  a  harder,  tougher,  low-browed  type, 
singularly  impervious  to  human  sympathy  or  in- 
terest in  any  matter  whatever  except  the  coin 
and  the  music  of  the  ring  of  the  cash  register, 
which  seems  to  soothe  their  robbing  breasts. 
Even  when  pleasant  young  fellows  go  into  this 
business  they  lapse  into  the  "gin-head"  type  in  a 
short  time.  Two  well-known  young  men,  semi- 
professional  athletes,  popular,  jolly,  healthy 


When  you  see  a  prominent  citizen  trying  to  unlock  hi*  front 
door  with  a  lead  pencil,  look  out. 

56 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


home  boys,  went  into  the  saloon  business  in  the 
loop  district  in  Chicago,  but  today  both  are  typical 
saloon  keepers,  hard,  sneering,  and  broken  in 
health. 

There  is  a  reason  for  all  this.  One  sees  a 
lot  of  human  nature  in  all  lines  of  business.  The 
saloon  keeper  sees  more  and  more  of  it  than 
anybody  else.  Everybody  is  trying  to  stick  the 
saloon  keeper.  If  he  passes  you  too  much 
change  one  never  hands  it  back,  for  every 
regular  patron  of  a  saloon  knows  he  is  bunked 
on  drinks  and  short  changed  at  any  and  all 
times  it  is  convenient. 

The  saloon  is  referred  to  by  many  as  the 
"Poor  Man's  Club."  Well,  it  is  rightly  named, 
it  is  clubbing  the  brains  out  of  many  a  poor  devil. 
Others  are  labeled  "Workingmen's  Home."  This 
is  a  misnomer.  It  should  read: — "Workingmen's 
Morgue." 

A  poor  man's  club !  Isn't  that  rich?  No  dues, 
no  passwords,  you  are  known  by  signs.  A  red 


A   saloon   keeper's   cash   register   bell   is   the  devil's   chime. 
Gin  and  genius  make  a  faulty  team. 

57 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


nose  and  ragged  clothes  and  almost  shoeless  feet 
proves  you  are  a  life  member.  You  pay  no  more 
dues,  only  to  nature.  And  when  you  shuffle  off, 
who  buries  you  and  looks  after  your  family?  The 
saloon  keeper?  Oh,  no!  It  is  your  sober,  law 
abiding  neighbors  of  course,  and  the  general 
public  is  taxed  for  their  maintenance. 

You  will  hear  defenders  of  the  liquor  traffic 
make  the  statement  that  saloon  keepers  are  "good 
fellows."  If  you  think  a  saloon  keeper  is  a  good 
fellow,  call  on  one  you  have  spent  all  your 
money  with  and  ask  him  for  a  drink.  When  an 
old  timer  comes  in,  a  miserable,  trembling 
tramp,  and  begs  for  a  drink,  he  will  be  refused 
and  ordered  out  of  the  saloon.  That  tramp  may 
be  you  a  few  years  from  now — you,  man,  that  can 
drink  or  let  it  alone. 

How  many,  many  times  have  I  heard  mep 
remark,  "Where  can  a  poor  down  and  out  go  for 
a  bite  and  rest  but  a  saloon?" 

When  you   are   hungry,   broke   and   almost 


A  home  is  a  vested  right;  a  saloon  a  vested  wrong. 
Whiskey  is  the  devil  in  liquid  form. 

58 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


perishing  for  a  drink,  did  you  ever  go  into  a 
saloon  for  relief?  I  have,  a  thousand  times,  in 
saloons  in  every  city  in  the  United  States.  And 
such  a  hearty  reception  you  receive. 

Walk  into  a  saloon  for  a  free  lunch,  broke. 
You  step  up  to  the  slop-jar  of  soup  and  start  to 
eat.  This  is  what  you  will  get  from  that  "good 
fellow"  behind  the  bar.  He  will  take  a  seltzer 
bottle  and  squirt  it  in  your  face  and  yell : — "Hey, 
there,  you  guy,  we  want  drinkers,  we  don't  want 
eaters.  Now  you  beat  it  on  or  I'll  give  you  a  bat 
in  the  belfry."  And  that  saloon  soup  is  made  of 
noodles,  poodles  and  cayoodles,  seasoned  with 
cockroaches,  bugs  and  flies.  If  you  want  a  taste 
of  this  good  fellowship  drop  in  any  saloon  and 
tackle  the  lunch,  without  buying. 

Other  defenders  of  a  saloon  say: — "The 
great  majority  of  those  who  patronize  the  saloon 
are  not  attracted  thither  by  its  liquors,  but  by 
its  recreative  features."  Yes,  that's  true.  If  you 
walk  into  a  saloon,  grab  a  hunk  of  free  lunch  and 


How   can   whiskey   drown   trouble   when   it   will   not  drown 
a  snake? 

59 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


don't  buy,  you  will  have  more  recreation  than 
Jess  Willard.  The  bartender  or  bouncer  will 
have  you  by  the  back  of  the  neck  and  seat  of  the 
trousers  and  if  you  don't  go  through  a  plate  glass 
door,  it's  because  the  door  is  open.  Oh,  yes! 
you  are  welcome  in  a  saloon,  if  you  are  broke,  just 
as  welcome  as  a  barrel  house  bum  in  the  White 
House. 

The  most  abominable  and  manhood  destroy- 
ing pests  in  the  country  to  my  mind  are  the 
saloons  and  bars  tucked  away  in  "respectable" 
office  buildings  known  as  "snake  holes!" 

A  so-called  respectable,  moderate  drinking 
citizen  can  sneak  in  one  of  these  buildings,  osten- 
sibly on  business.  He  is  not  seen  entering  a  saloon 
by  his  associates.  In  high  class  office  build- 
ings in  all  leading  American  cities  these 
"snake  holes"  are  starting  thousands  of  men, 
young  and  old,  on  the  road  to  the  barrel  house, 
slums  and  destruction.  I  will  say,  however,  that 
all  office  buildings  do  not  contain  these  "snake 


An   overdrawn   nature  account   and   bank  account 
spell   failure. 

60 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


holes,"  as  I  could  name  fifty  in  Chicago,  New 
York,  Boston,  Philadelphia,  and  other  cities  that 
will  not  lease  space  for  a  "snake  hole !"  Possibly 
those  who  read  this  can  locate  office  buildings 
in  their  respective  localities  that  permit  the 
existence  of  these  vile  holes.  Many  who  patronize 
these  places  are  considered  model  men  in  their 
home  community,  often  being  closely  allied  with 
churches,  civic  bodies,  and  charitable  societies, 
for  uplifting  and  supporting  those  who  are  cursed 
by  the  burden  of  drink;  reformers  and  philan- 
thropists in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  but  hypocrites 
and  sneaks  and  cowards  in  the  eyes  of  their 
Master.  These  "snake  holes"  are  the  fountain 
head  of  drunkenness. 

I  have  met  hundreds  of  saloon  keepers  who 
were  mean  and  grasping,  absolutely  devoid  of 
all  love  of  humanity,  men  who  care  nothing  for 
their  fellow  being  so  long  as  they  get  the  "coin." 
The  "death  bell"  on  the  cash  register  is  music  in 
their  ears'. 


Every  "day  of  grace"  for  the  saloon  is  a  disgrace. 
Take  a  pony  of  brandy  and  ride  to  destruction 

61 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


I  know  thousands  of  men  engaged  in  the 
saloon  and  whiskey  business,  having  spent  a  for- 
tune in  making  their  acquaintance.  The  most 
cf  them  are  prosperous,  have  comfortable  and 
beautiful  homes,  live  easily,  have  all  the  good 
things  of  this  life,  and  seem  happy.  They  live  in 
luxury  because  of  the  weakness  of  the  poor  man 
who  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to  use  their 
goods.  They  are  living  on  the  blood  money 
wrung  from  the  hearts  of  wives  and  children. 
Does  the  saloon  keeper  have  any  pangs  of  remorse 
as  he  rides  through  the  streets  in  a  richly  equipped 
auto,  with  his  diamond  bedecked  wife  and  well 
dressed  and  nourished  children,  and  sees  some  of 
his  bedraggled  and  besotted  victims  hobbling 
along  the  street?  He  lives  a  life  of  luxury 
from  the  destruction  of  these  very  people. 

Saloon  keepers  know  the  goods  they  sell  will 
produce  these  results.  They  are  case  hardened. 
They  reason  it  is  a  legitimate  business  or  the 
municipality  would  not  legalize  it. 


A  boozer  is  the  one-legged  man  in  the  race  of  life. 
Whiskey  and  war  are  twins. 

62 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


When  a  saloon  keeper  orders  a  few  barrels 
of  booze  from  the  distiller,  does  he  stop  to  think 
of  how  much  misery  he  is  adding  to  the  com- 
munity? How  many  curses  he  is  heaping  upon 
himself;  of  how  many  heartaches  and  tears  he  is 
causing;  of  how  many  men  and  families  each 
barrel  will  ruin?  Then  let  Mr.  Saloon  Keeper 
think  of  his  wife  and  little  ones  who  are  made 
comfortable  through  the  distress  of  his  neighbors 
and  the  heart  blood  of  human  beings. 

The  many  elements  of  'evil  fascination  that 
are  about  a  saloon  hold  many  men  and  youths 
in  a  vise-like  grip. 

Saloons  must  have  fresh  drinking  boys  every 
day,  or  they  must  go  out  of  business  for  lack  of 
patronage.  The  saloon  keeper  cares  nothing  for 
the  ultimate  effect  of  drink  on  his  customers  or 
their  children  or  families.  A  fresh  drinking  boy 
every  day  is  necessary  to  make  the  saloon  cash 
register  ring  musically  in  the  saloon  proprietor's 
ears.  Wretched  men  and  saddened  women  and 


A  saloon  keeper's  friendship  is  like  the  tide;  when  you 
are  all  in,  he's  out. 

63 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


orphaned  children  are  living  testimonials  of  the 
devastating  work  of  saloons.  For  the  groans  and 
heartaches  of  wives  he  cares  nothing.  Fill  up 
the  ranks  with  fresh  drinkers  and  let  the  old 
paralyzed  and  emaciated  soaks  fill  the  hospitals, 
graves,  jails,  asylums  and  poor  houses.  The* 
perpetuation  of  the  saloon  business  is  based  on 
minors  forming  the  habit  of  liquor  drinking  at 
the  earliest  possible  age. 

It  is  not  right  for  any  man  to  derive  a  living 
from  that  which  is  debasing  the  minds  and  ruin- 
ing the  souls  of  men.  No  man  has  a  moral  or 
should  be  given  a  legal  right  to  sell  a  poison 
which  produces  misery  and  madness;  which  is 
destroying  the  happiness  of  the  domestic  circle, 
ruining  homes  and  families  and  filling  the  land 
with  women  and  children  in  a  far  more  deplor- 
able condition  than  that  of  widows  and  orphans; 
which  causes  nearly  all  the  crime  and  pauperism 
that  exists  and  which  the  law  abiding  and  sober 
citizenshp  must  pay  for. 


The  best  way   to   conquer  whiskey   is   to  shun   it. 
Safety  first  is  sobriety  first. 

64 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


The  liquor  traffic  is  the  same  unrighteous 
trade  everywhere.  It  multiplies  want,  aggravates 
misery,  and  stimulates  every  evil  passion  into 
crime.  The  sufferings  of  its  victims,  the  poverty, 
hunger,  nakedness,  and  cold  of  families,  and  the 
battered  body — with  mind  beclouded  and  con- 
science destroyed — of  the  victim,  makes  a  horri- 
ble picture. 

It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate,  impossible 
truthfully  to  paint  the  effects  of  this  evil,  either 
on  those  who  are  addicted  to  it,  or  those  who 
indirectly  suffer  from  it. 

Incredible  as  it  may  seem  to  the  decent 
citizen  who  is  not  informed  in  the  matter,  the 
tough  saloons,  barrel  houses,  pool  rooms,  and 
cheap  cabarets  have  formed  a  working  organiza- 
tion and  are  enabled  to  exert  considerable  in- 
fluence in  local  politics  through  swinging  the 
bums  and  lodging  house  vote  to  "favorite  sons." 
If  the  saloon  keeper  gets  in  trouble  he  appeals  to 
the  organization,  and  they  in  turn  go  to  the  law- 


Whiskey  causes   your  old   friends   to  rush  by   you  like  a 
pay  car  passing  a  tramp. 

65 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


yer  and  politician  who  are  there  to  protect  them 
in  any  villainy  they  may  be  charged  with.  A 
saloon  keeper  always  appeals  to  his  brewer  for 
protection  whenever  in  trouble,  and  the  more  of 
that  particular  brewery  "slop"  he  sells  the  more 
protection  and  influence  he  is  able  to  exact  from 
that  source. 

You  can  readily  see  that  the  saloon  and  the 
use  of  intoxicating  drinks  is  a  greater  destroying 
force  to  life  and  health  and  virtue  than  all  other 
physical  evils  combined,  and  all  attempts  to  regu- 
late it  will  not  only  prove  abortive  but  will 
aggravate  the  evil.  Saloons  do  not  need  regula- 
tion, they  need  strangulation.  They  must  be 
eradicated,  not  a  root  or  germ  must  be  left  behind, 
for  until  this  is  done  the  door  of  temptation  and 
destruction  is  wide  open  to  the  youth  and  man- 
hood of  the  country. 

The  way  of  the  transgressor  is  hard,  but  the 
path  of  the  saloon  keeper  is  going  to  be  harder. 

If  it  were  possible  in  every  instance  to  deter- 


Samson  was  not  strong  enough  to  carry  a  booze 
handicap. 

66 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


mine  with  precision  the  responsible  causes  for  all 
the  crimes  committed  and  all  the  misery  suffered 
by  unfortunate  men  and  women  it  would  be  found 
that  in  an  overwhelming  majority  of  cases  the 
saloons  and  their  output  would  be  at  fault.  It 
is  inconceivable  that  society  should  much  longer 
tolerate  the  existence  of  an  institution  that  is  a 
social  crime.  Viewed  from  the  standpoint  of 
economics  the  saloon  is  a  parasite.  It  absorbs 
much  and  yields  nothing.  No  person  is  benefited 
by  its  existence.  The  so-called  license  or  revenue 
it  pays  is  negligible  in  comparison  with  the  cost 
it  exacts.  It  is  the  most  destructive  agency  of 
which  man  has  knowledge.  Even  war  is  not  to 
be  compared  with  it  in  the  ruin  it  inflicts,  for 
huge  as  is  the  waste  of  war  and  frightful  as  is 
the  suffering  it  occasions,  war  is  periodical, 
whereas  the  liquor  traffic  of  the  country  is  con- 
tinuous in  its  devastation. 

The  license  system  of  raising  money  does  not 
put  the  burden  on  the  saloon  keeper,  but  places 


Sobriety   stand*    for   law,   order,   peace,   health  and 
happiness. 

67 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


the  load  on  the  poor  and  unfortunate  booze 
fighter.  The  saloon  keeper  has  no  money ;  if  you 
don't  feed  him  jitneys  and  dimes  he  quits  busi- 
ness. He  is  simply  a  distress  collector  for  the 
municipality  in  which  he  conducts  his  business. 
Some  people  don't  seem  to  care  how  much  crime 
and  misery  and  suffering  you  cause,  Mr.  Saloon 
Keeper.  Get  all  you  can,  in  any  way  you  can, 
put  up  screens  so  people  in  the  street  cannot  see 
what  you  do,  sell  beer  in  cans  and  in  buckets  to 
children,  short  change  your  customers,  don't  turn 
down  a  patron  because  he  is  ragged  and  filthy  and 
you  know  his  family  is  starving — get  the  coin. 

The  liquor  traffic  stands  alone  and  has  no 
right  to  rank  with  the  ordinary  avocations  of 
men.  There  is  no  trade  so  damaging  to  the  peo- 
ple and  so  hardening  to  the  man  engaged  in  it  as 
the  saloon  business.  Men  naturally  kind  hearted, 
who  would  help  a  fellow  being  in  distress,  seem 
in  this  trade  to  lose  all  humanity  and  sympathy 
in  the  race  for  a  nickel,  even  though  it  is  wrung 


Whiskey   stands   for  drunkenness,  poverty,   crime,   vice  and 
scores  of  attendant  evils. 

68 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


from  the  lifeblood  of  a  brother  and  at  the  expense 
of  starving  children  and  heartbroken  wives. 

The  liquor,  brewery,  and  saloon  interests  of 
the  United  States  are  always  active.  They  seek 
to  control  national  and  local  legislation,  the  press 
and  any  agency  that  can  benefit  and  perpetuate 
their  trade.  This  combination  is  as  cunning  as  a 
fox,  wise  as  a  serpent,  strong  as  an  ox,  bold  as  a 
lion,  merciless  as  a  tiger,  remorseless  as  a  hyena, 
fierce  as  a  pestilence,  deadly  as  a  plague.  To 
condemn  and  correct  such  a  group  is  not  the  pas- 
time of  an  hour,  but  the  manly,  hero-born  martyr- 
dom and  continuous  work  of  the  law  abiding  and 
decent  citizenship  of  the  country. 


69 


CHAPTER     SIX 


Living   With   the    Underworld 


1  SPENT  months  with  the  real  underworld,  not 
only  in  Chicago,  but  in  cities  throughout 
the  country.  It  is  a  fact  that  a  whiskey-driven 
wretch  slinks  more  and  more  into  the  lowest 
haunts  and  fainter  and  fainter  becomes  his  vision 
of  decency  in  attempting  to  appease  his  appetite 
for  drink. 

Down  among  the  sodden  masses  of  drink 
bound  men  I  learned  for  myself,  being  one  of  the 
unfortunate,  the  awful  malignity  and  curse  of 
whiskey.  In  a  west  side  saloon  one  morning  I 
found  myself  helplessly  drunk.  After  sobering 


The  Liberty  Bell's  cracked  and  so  is  Personal  Liberty. 
A  dry  Sunday  makes  a  sober  Monday. 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


up  a  trifle  I  looked  around.  Surrounding  me  was 
an  army  of  men,  babbling  and  gesticulating.  Such 
a  medley  of  human  wreckage  stood  about  me, 
brought  together  through  drink.  I  know  such 
a  pitiful  herd  of  unfortunates  could  not  be  dupli- 
cated in  any  other  place  in  the  world  but  a  grog- 
gery — the  underworld  in  action. 

Here  I  was  at  last,  drunk,  homeless,  helpless, 
one  of  and  among  the  human  machines  that  put 
themselves  out  of  order  with  whiskey.  I  noted 
their  bloated  faces  and  half  nourished  bodies, 
bleared  eyes,  and  vicious  countenances,  unwashed, 
ragged,  and  all  clamoring  for  drink,  but  in  my 
drunken  condition  I  did  not  fully  realize  the 
depths  to  which  I  had  reached. 

Here  in  this  vermin  infected  district  I  prac- 
tically lived  for  months.  I  was  as  familiar  as 
though  born  and  bred  in  the  place.  Every  thief, 
bum,  hobo,  drunkard,  and  dope  fiend  seemed  to  be 
a  friend,  and  in  my  crazed  and  drunken  condition 
I  entered  body  and  soul  into  their  lives.  Where 


You  can't  raise  American  Beauty  roses  in  a  beer  garden. 
A  bartender  is  the  advance  agent  of  the  devil. 

71 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


the  liquor  came  from  I  do  not  remember,  but  it 
was  the  rankest  and  vilest  stuff  that  ever  passed  a 
man's  lips.  I  was  morally  dead — from  booze.  I 
was  going  through  an  awful  experience. 

The  degrading  associates,  the  immoral  at- 
mosphere, the  sad  sights  I  witnessed,  made  up  a 
composite  picture  of  sadness  and  despair  that 
will  never  be  forgotten. 

Here  were  seen  all  the  bitter  suffering  and 
utter  despair  of  the  men  who  had  played  the 
wrong  side  of  life  and  were  paying  the  penalty, 
the  finished  product  of  the  vile  saloon. 

Here  I  met  and  consorted  with  many  sorts  of 
criminals.  My  life  among  them,  questioning 
them,  hearing  them  plan  with  their  confederates 
for  a  robbery  as  carefully  as  a  board  of  bank 
directors  would  consider  an  application  for  a  loan, 
I  came  to  understand  thoroughly  the  motives, 
and  methods  of  that  criminal  portion  of  the  com- 
munity put  down  as  the  underworld.  The  great 
mass  of  people  know  nothing  about  this  class 


Some   men   boast   of   being  well   preserved  after  a   drinking 
life.        They  ought  to  be — they  are  well  pickled. 

72 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


except  that  they  are  law  breakers.  Nearly  every 
one  I  met  drank  whiskey  or  were  dope  fiends. 
Their  meetings  and  conferences  and  planning 
were  always  in  a  saloon. 

With  all  the  desolation  and  woe  about  me, 
I  was  powerless  to  break  away.  I  found  life 
with  the  underworld  a  cruel  and  remorseless  one. 
For  weeks  not  a  meal  passed  my  lips,  nothing  but 
cheap  and  half  cooked  food,  put  out  as  free  lunch 
in  foul  and  insanitary  saloons.  I  slept  in  chairs 
and  on  benches  in  saloons  a  few  hours  during  the 
day,  and  if  I  managed  to  get  a  few  nickels  would 
get  a  ten  cent  bed  in  a  cheap  lodging  house; 
failing  in  this  I  would  walk  the  streets  until  the 
saloons  opened  at  5  A.  M.  The  only  time  I  was 
sure  of  being  in  out  of  the  cold  for  a  night  would 
be  when  arrested  for  some  offense  and  thrown  in 
a  police  station  or  the  county  jail,  which  occurred 
many  times. 

I  was  not  long  in  learning  that  all  barrel 
houses  and  most  of  the  saloons  give  their  un- 


A  rubber  back  and  a  weak  mind  i«   the  devil'*  model  of  m. 
perfect   man. 

73 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


derworld  patrons  every  morning  what  is  known 
as  an  "eye  opener"  or  a  "brain  duster,"  or  "shot 
of  dynamite." 

This  starts  you  in  for  the  day.  Every  bum 
and  whiskey  drinker  must  have  a  drink  in  the 
morning.  I  would  start  in  South  State  Street  and 
wind  up  in  Madison  Street  or  Halsted  Street, 
getting  a  "lifesaver"  of  poison  in  nearly  every 
dump.  By  the  time  one  had  worked  the  system 
he  would  be  reasonably  drunk  and  ready  to  com- 
mit any  deed  the  mind  presented.  Thousands  are 
going  over  the  same  route  in  Chicago  today,  and 
in  other  cities  throughout  the  United  States,  as 
all  groggeries  have  a  similar  scheme.  These  sa- 
loon keepers  figure  that  a  few  drinks  will  give  a 
bum  nerve  and  he  will  start  out  to  beg,  borrow 
or  steal,  and  the  proceeds  will  come  to  his  joint. 

I  was  aware  in  my  half  sane  moments  that 
there  was  only  one  end  to  this  life  I  was  living. 
I  would  try  to  restrain  myself.  A  drunkard 
lives  in  continual  fear  of  delirium  tremens.  He 


It  is  about  as   easy  to  separate   the  light  and  heat   of   the 
sun  as  it  is  to  separate  drink  and  poverty. 

74 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


cares  nothing  for  death.      I  was  gradually  going 
down  the  scale. 

I  was  living  in  a  world  which  knew  nothing 
of  decency,  sobriety,  honor,  or  self-respect. 
Such  things  as  the  thought  of  a  former  beautiful 
home  a  few  blocks  from  this  cesspool  of  degrada- 
tion was  a  vague  and  unregarded  recollection.  I 
wanted  drink — and  more  drink.  Can  you  con- 
ceive of  such  a  world  on  West  Madison  Street, 
within  a  stone's  throw  of  the  beautiful  Northwest- 
ern Railway  Station?  Of  course  not!  There  it 
was,  and  there  it  is  today.  Yet  I  lived  there  and 
associated  with  thousands  of  poor  wretches,  many 
of  whom,  like  myself  had  seen  better  days,  but  the 
everlasting  crave  for  drink  had  pinioned  them  to 
destruction.  I  drank  with  these  men,  begged 
with  them,  slept  with  them,  in  cheap  lodging) 
houses,  trucks  and  cellarways.  Sober  enough  to 
read  sometimes,  I  would  muddle  over  a  news- 
paper. Wars,  great  political  changes,  deaths, 
catastrophes,  these  events  were  utterly  dull  and 


A  boozer'*  life  is  like  a  checker  board  with  old  John 
Barleycorn  always  in  the  King  Row. 

75 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


insignificant  to  me.  I  was  always  wondering 
where  I  could  get  another  drink.  Everything  was 
gone ;  I  was  about  ready  to  strike  bottom. 

Among  the  men  I  met  in  those  hideous  holes 
were  many  who  had  been  prominent  and  pros- 
perous in  the  business  and  professional  life  of 
Chicago — now  awful  wrecks.  Booze  was  their 
master. 

There  was  apparently  nothing  left  for  me  but 
to  push  myself  hurriedly  to  a  drunkard's  grave. 
Daily  some  of  my  new  found  cronies  were  being 
lugged  to  the  morgue,  hospital  or  jail.  These 
things  did  not  feaze  me.  I  had  already  been 
everywhere,  but  the  morgue.  There  was  no  sub- 
stance, spirit,  brain  or  will  power  left.  I  was  a 
nervous,  drunken,  alcoholic  wreck.  Hope,  cour- 
age, loyalty,  truth,  I  had  parted  with  completely. 
Everything  was  blank,  it  seemed.  I  had  no  ties, 
I  had  no  friends,  I  had  no  home  whatsoever,  all 
brought  about  by  myself.  I  was  aware  that 
whiskey  is  a  mind  destroying,  body  sapping,  repu- 


If  you  choose  the  water  wa.gon  you  dodge  the  patrol 
wagon. 

76 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


tation  corroding  beverage,  but  I  was  powerless  to 
face  the  other  way. 

One  night  I  stood  on  the  sawdust  floor  of  a 
barrel  house,  drunk,  sick,  nervous,  a  motionless 
wreck,  when  I  was  seized  with  a  whiskey  fit,  and 
although  it  was  a  bitter  winter's  night,  the  boss 
of  the  joint  had  me  carried  out  in  the  alley — 
little  caring  whether  I  froze  to  death  or  not.  A 
friendly  hobo  put  me  in  a  lodging  house,  which 
undoubtedly  saved  my  life. 

I  was  firmly  intrenched  in  the  haven  of  the 
underworld,  in  the  Desplaines  Police  District  of 
Chicago.  Here  were  assembled  thousands  of 
shells  of  men  in  the  saloons,  liquor  stores  and 
barrel  houses.  Wickedness  and  drunkenness  were 
dealt  out  without  stint  in  this  district  and  with 
these  men  there  remained  only  a  charred,  stupid, 
indecent  thirst  for  liquor.  Here  they  all  con- 
gregate— the  alcoholic  wrecks  of  the  city.  Dimly 
lit,  stifling  lodging  houses,  with  a  "good"  bed  for 
ten  cents,  foul  cellar  drinking  places,  thieves' 


Getting  drunk  by   mail   is   becoming   quite   fashionable. 
A  man  full  of  malt  isn't  worth  his  salt. 

77 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


resorts,  second-hand  dealers  and  groggeries  and 
barrel  houses,  were  alive  with  an  army  of  wicked 
men  and  boys,  and  dirt,  rags,  vermin,  blasphemy, 
booze  and  darkness  reigned  without  hindrance ;  a 
fantastic  and  ghostly  confusion  of  human  dere- 
licts. The  condition  was  not  unusual  to  the 
police.  They  would  saunter  jauntily  through  this 
round  of  drunks,  bums,  hobos  and  thieves,  and 
stop  at  a  bright  light  occasionally,  put  a  "few 
under  their  belt"  and  move  along.  The  conditions 
on  the  street  and  in  the  saloons  were  of  no  moment 
to  them.  Thousands  of  people  passing  on  the 
street  and  in  street  cars  and  automobiles;  streets 
crowded,  and  in  fact  a  horrible  sight  for  women, 
girls  and  young  men  to  see,  the  very  lowest  of 
saloons  and  barrel  houses  soliciting  trade,  with 
their  front  doors  wide  open. 

Nobody  seemed  to  care.  It  seemed  to  be 
taken  as  an  accepted  fact  that  this  condition  had 
always  existed  in  the  neighborhood  and  always 
would.  Here  I  was  in  the  melting  pot  of  this 


A  snake  with  every  drink  is  the  prize  all  boozers  draw. 
A  red  nose  is  not  caused  by  eating  red  apples. 

78 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


dissipating  and  disappearing  humanity.  Ragged 
and  shriveled  human  forms  would  shuffle  out 
of  sight  daily;  faces  would  vanish  for  the  last 
time  and  police  patrols  and  ambulances  were  busy 
making  hurried  trips  to  jails,  morgues  and  hos- 
pitals. Nobody  cared,  nobody  remembered  any 
unfortunate  companion  after  the  day  was  over, 
and  I  was  cognizant  of  all  this  hideousness  and 
misery  and  distress  and  death  and  still  I  was 
alcoholically  welded  to  these  ratholes.  But  the 
precision  of  familiarity  made  me  acquainted 
with  the  devious  and  devilish  ways  the  business 
of  the  district  was  managed,  and  I  often  saw  a 
stranger  who  had  been  lured  to  the  neighborhood, 
with  money  on  his  person,  pushed  into  a  saloon, 
given  a  few  "knockout"  drops  in  his  whiskey 
become  turned  around  and  mystified  and  stupe- 
fied from  drink,  and  then  gently  "rolled"  or 
robbed  and  pushed  into  the  alley  and  picked  up 
by  a  policeman  and  "thrown  in"  for  being  drunk 
and  asleep  in  a  public  place.  Nobody  cares! 


The  saloon  bar  brings  many  a  good  man  to  the  bar  of 
justice 

79 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


The  wonder  to  the  uninitiated  is  how  the 
great  army  of  loafers  and  drunks  manage  to 
eat,  drink,  have  a  place  to  sleep  and  garments  to 
clothe  themselves  in.  Each  bum  has  a  system 
he  has  marked  out  that  gives  him  an  existence. 
Hundreds  of  the  men  who  are  still  fairly  nor- 
mal, whose  earlier  lives  led  them  in  legitimate 
business  channels,  are  employed  during  the  day 
addressing  envelopes  in  letter  shops,  addressing 
firms,  large  printing  offices,  and  others  who  send 
out  printed  matter  and  circulars  for  local  busi- 
ness firms.  These  are  known  as  "pen  dumps." 
The  daily  average  pay  is  about  seventy-five  cents. 
Coffee  and  rolls  in  the  morning  five  cents;  two 
"tubs  of  suds"  and  free  lunch  at  noon,  ten  cents ; 
fifteen  cents  for  a  bed,  and  the  balance  for  supper 
and  booze.  The  booze  is  five  cents  a  drink  and 
is  known  as  "five-year-olds,"  "Kys,"  or  "Ponies." 
A  rotten,  doctored,  diluted,  poisoned  decoction 
that  makes  a  man  stupid,  crazy  and  delirious. 

This  mode  of  living  is  closely  followed  by  all 


Drink  keeps  a  man  right  between  the  hammer  and  anvil  all 
hit  life — the  saloon  keeper  is  the  blacksmith. 

80 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


the  "gin-heads"  in  the  underworld  population. 
''Out  on  the  stem"  and  "mooching,"  is  the 
easiest  graft  a  bum  can  work.  In  the  "one  legged 
saloon"  on  Halsted  Street,  about  forty  cripples 
made  their  headquarters.  The  saloon  keeper 
gave  each  of  them  car  fare,  and  about  two 
o'clock  every  afternoon  they  would  ride  out  to  a 
residence  neighborhood,  panhandle  from  door 
to  door,  "stemming"  or  "mooching"  and  often 
they  came  back  with  as  high  as  ten  dollars  in 
small  coin,  not  one  ever  returning  empty  handed. 
If  a  stew  gets  drunk  and  breaks  or  loses  his 
crutch  this  saloon  has  a  supply  on  hand.  They 
will  tie  your  arm  up  in  bandages  to  give  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  fracture,  furnish  you  with  green  or 
smoked  goggles  and  a  cane  to  feel  along  with.  In 
fact  make  you  a  first-class  blind  beggar  in  five 
minutes. 

Others  peddle  collar  buttons,  shoe  strings, 
combs,  and  although  they  sell  an  occasional  article 
the  goods  are  carried  for  a  blind.  If  the  house- 


A  man  who  follows  the  bright  lights  is  always  in  the  dark 
Personal  Liberty  is  organized  hypocrisy. 

81 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


wife  is  not  on  guard  and  the  front  door  unlocked, 
Mr.  Peddler  will  pick  up  a  clock,  vase,  piece  of 
statuary,  rug  or  anything  that  can  be  sold.  Old 
bums  and  drunks  are  continually  begging  clothes. 
If  they  can't  use  them,  to  the  secand-hand  store 
they  go,  or  to  some  ragged  pal. 

I  tried  to  quit  drinking,  but  only  for  a  day. 
But  I  was  helpless  and  hopeless,  and  finally  I 
found  my  way  back  to  the  barrel  house  district 
where  many  a  poor  drunken  wretch,  with  a 
broken  heart  from  repeated  failures,  had  gone 
before  me,  and  for  months  I  lived  there  a  home- 
less drunken  vagabond,  eking  out  a  living  by 
begging,  borrowing,  and  passing  worthless  checks. 
There  are  hundreds  of  saloons  in  Chicago  with  a 
flaming  sign  over  the  door,  "Workingmen's  Ex- 
change." Yes,  it  is  an  exchange,  where  a  poor 
devil  exchanges  his  brains  and  money  for  booze 
and  misery. 

Just  for  drink !  I  didn't  want  food.  What 
does  a  drunken  bum  want  with  food?  A  crumb 


The  man  in  the  moon  would  not  be  a  very  profitable  saloon 
customer.      He  gets  full  only  once  a  month. 

82 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


or  two  of  free  lunch;  it's  as  much  as  a  man's 
stomach  will  hold — what  I  wanted  was  another 
drink,  a  little  more  alcohol  on  the  fire.  Then  the 
next  drink.  I  pursued  it  for  years — growing 
weaker  mentally,  physically,  always  hoping  for  a 
mirage  of  soul's  care.  It  is  labor  to  pursue  the 
next  drink  forever.  .  But  exhaustion  is  stupid  and 
numb.  I  slept  or  rested  but  little — snatches  here 
or  there  in  a  barrel  house,  or  cheap  saloons  or 
cheap  lodging  houses  until  thrown  out;  nobody 
wanted  a  drunk  around;  even  the  villainous  sa- 
loon keeper  who  fills  you  with  poison  will  throw 
you  out  if  you  are  too  noisy  or  broke. 

I  was  successful  at  drinking,  successful 
enough  to  Irave  the  delirium  tremens  twice. 

I  was  systematic  in  my  hunt  for  drink.  I 
could  not  and  would  not  work.  I  was  too  sick, 
nervous  and  physically  worthless.  I  carried  a 
little  memorandum  in  my  pocket  and  I  would  map 
out  my  itinerary  from  day  to  day,  beginning  at 
State  and  Randolph  in  the  morning  and  winding 


Any   business    that   causes    human   misery   and   distress   is   m. 
menace. 

83 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


up  at  Thirty-first  and  State  about  midnight,  good 
and  drunk.  Different  streets  on  different  days 
was  my  program.  I  must  not  panhandle  the 
same  saloon  twice  the  same  week  or  there  would 
be  trouble;  they  might  kick  me  out.  I  would 
go  to  bed  full  and  get  up  in  the  morning  with  only 
a  general  idea  of  where  I  had  ended  my  previous 
day's  work,  and  if  I  called  on  the  same  saloon, 
trouble  would  ensue  and  out  I  would  go,  very 
kindly  assisted  by  the  bartender,  who  did  not 
request  me  to  call  again. 

Hundreds  of  my  companions  were  sent  to  the 
Bridewell.  Out  for  a  while  and  in  again.  The 
short  confinement  did  no  good.  Society  should 
change  its  attitude  toward  those  sentenced  for 
acts  committed  while  under  the  influence  of  alco- 
hol. If  we  simply  shut  up  drunkards,  and  only 
remove  the  alcohol  for  the  time  being,  you  do  not 
obtain  an  essential  improvement  of  their  nature. 
The  prison  penalty  should  be  supplanted  by  a 
thorough  and  serious  education  on  the  evils  of 


A  home  is  a.  vested  right;  a  saloon  a  vested  wrong. 
Whiskey  is  the  devil  in  liquid  form. 


84 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


drink.  Men  must  be  taught  that  alcohol  is  their 
destroyer,  but  no  penal  or  moralizing  teaching  is 
going  to  reform  any  one.  Instead,  they  must, 
according  to  capacity,  be  given  a  thorough  knowl- 
edge of  the  effects  of  alcohol  upon  the  mind  and 
body. 


85 


CHAPTER    SEVEN 


Suffering    From    Delirium    Tremens 


THHE  awful  penalty  of  excessive  drinking  was 
•••  my  lot  at  last.  I  was  picked  up  in  the 
street  and  rushed  to  a  hospital,  with  that  ter- 
rible scourge,  delirium  tremens,  gripping  my 
whole  system  in  a  vise  of  writhing  agony.  It  was 
of  my  own  making.  I  knew  it  was  coming,  but  I 
was  weak,  had  an  uncontrollable  appetite  for 
whiskey  and  deliberately  plunged  myself  into  this 
awful  condition. 

I  am  making  my  own  terrible  experiences  and 
sufferings  public  as  an  object  lesson  to  drinkers 
who  are  slowly  reaching  this  sure  toboggan  of 


If  you  make  a  business  of  drinking  booze,  booze  will  get 
your  business. 

86 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


misery.  Let  it  be  known  to  all  that  the  whole 
story  and  history  of  alcohol  is  a  tragedy.  My 
experience  and  observations  are  given  as  a  beacon 
light  to  those  who  are  embarking  upon  this  slip- 
pery road. 

In  the  slimy  trail  of  the  alcoholic  serpent  you 
will  find  everything  that  is  dark  and  dreadful.  I 
found  it. 

The  sight  of  a  man  undergoing  the  terrible 
tortures  of  delirium  tremens  is  one  I  trust  no 
reader  of  these  lines  will  ever  witness.  It  would 
live  with  you  to  the  day  of  your  death.  God 
grant  that  horrible  sight  may  forever  be  spared 
you. 

What  is  there  in  whiskey  that  enters  a  man's 
soul  and  very  life  and  drags  him  down  to  the  level 
of  a  beast? 

I  give  but  a  mere  outline  of  the  picture  of 
this  terrible  scourge,  which  condition,  in  the  ful- 
ness of  awful  detail,  God  only  knows. 

I  was  placed  on  a  cot,  stripped  and  manacled 
and  placed  in  a  straitjacket.  My  body  writhed 


The   nation    is    founded   on    manhood   and   womanhood;    the 
saloon  is  founded  and  thrives  on  the  wrecks  of  both. 

87 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


and  trembled  and  my  parched  lips  had  their  skin 
torn  as  I  tried  to  utter  words  of  condemnation  to 
my  attendants  who  were  restraining  me.  I  could 
plainly  see  toads  squatting  in  the  corners  and  ser- 
pents were  coiled  about  the  bed  posts,  and  hissing 
in  my  ears,  while  all  manner  of  imps  were  dancing 
about  in  the  air,  spouting  a  blue  flame  in  my 
face.  Such  a  horrible,  torturing  condition  no  man 
can  truly  portray  or  describe.  It  was  as  though 
all  the  demons  of  hell  had  combined  to  harass 
and  torment  me. 

In  my  drunken  frenzy  I  shrieked  for  alcohol 
— alcohol  in  any  form.  There  were  days  of 
mental  restlessness  and  nights  of  sleepless  torture. 

No  chamber  of  horrors  ever  described  could 
convey  an  accurate  description  of  the  awful,  cru- 
cial and  soul  killing  writhings  that  I  experienced. 
Jumping  out  of  the  way  of  pink  elephants,  feeling 
carefully  on  my  bed  clothing  for  gila  monsters 
and  lizards,  moaning,  howling  and  crying  for 
some  unseen  force  to  relieve  me  from  my  awful 


A  saloon  keeper  is  usually  a  diplomat,  but  his  customers 
are  always   doormats. 

88 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


condition,  I  would  finally  lapse  into  a  fit.  Oc- 
casionally a  "shot  of  dope"  would  be  injected 
to  allay  my  sufferings,  but  even  with  that  I 
would  continue  to  writhe,  and  curse  and  spit  and 
glare,  my  eyeballs  bloody  and  protruding  and 
ablaze  with  fury. 

Hideous  faces  appeared  on  the  walls  and  on 
the  ceiling  and  on  the  floors;  foul  things  crept 
along  my  bedclothes  and  glaring  eyes  peered  into 
mine.  I  was  at  one  time  surrounded  by  myriads 
of  monstrous  spiders  and  rats  which  crawled 
slowly,  slowly,  over  every  limb,  while  beaded 
drops  of  perspiration  would  start  to  my  brow, 
and  my  limbs  would  shiver  until  the  bed  rattled. 

Strange  colored  lights  would  dance  be- 
fore my  eyes,  and  then  suddenly  the  very  black- 
ness of  darkness  would  appall  me  by  its  dense 
gloom.  All  at  once,  while  gazing  at  "a  frightful 
creation  of  my  distempered  mind,  I  seemed  to  be 
struck  with  a  sudden  blindness.  I  knew  an  elec- 
tric light  was  burning  in  the  room,  but  I  could 


Split   a   bottle   of   champagne   with  a   saloon   keeper  and   he 
will  usually  reciprocate  by  splitting  a  bottle  of  beer. 

89 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


not  see  it — all  was  so  pitchy  dark.  Suddenly  I 
saw  standing  at  the  foot  of  my  bed  a  red 
devil  with  hands  polluted  with  blood  and  arms 
filled  with  serpents  that  were  crawling  and  wrig- 
gling, and  stinging  and  hissing,  for  their  unpity- 
ing  and  unrelenting  master.  My  very  vitals  were 
pierced  with  agony  as  the  red  monster  continued 
to  jeer  and  taunt  and  pursue  his  infernal  work. 
Is  there  no  escape  from  this  terrible  torture,  I 
moaned.  It  would  seem  as  though  nothing  but 
death  could  give  me  relief,  and  oh !  how  welcome 
it  would  have  been. 

To  somewhat  alleviate  my  pain  the  attendant 
released  my  arms  for  a  few  minutes.  All  at 
once  I  lost  the  sense  of  feeling.  As  I  tried  to 
grasp  my  arm  in  one  hand  the  sense  of  touch  was 
gone.  I  put  my  hand  to  my  side,  my  head,  but 
felt  nothing,  and  still  I  knew  my  limbs,  my  frame, 
were  there.  And  then  the  scene  would  change. 
I  was  falling — falling,  swiftly  as  an  arrow — far 
down  into  some  terrible  abyss;  and  so  realistic 


A  saloon  cash  register  is   the  devil's   chime.      Just  place  a 
coin  in  the  snake's  mouth  and  hear  it  ring. 

90 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


was  it,  as  I  fell,  I  could  see  the  rocky  sides  of  the 
horrible  shaft,  where  mocking,  gibing,  fiend-like 
forms  were  perched,  and  I  could  feel  the  air 
rushing  past  me,  making  the  sweat  stream  out  by 
the  force  of  the  unwholesome  blast.  Then  the 
paroxysm  sometimes  ceased  for  a  few  moments, 
and  I  would  sink  back  on  my  pallet  drenched  with 
perspiration,  utterly  exhausted,  and  feeling  a 
dreadful  certainty  of  the  renewal  of  my  torments. 

There  were  times  when  it  seemed  absolutely 
impossible  to  stand  the  strain  for  another  minute. 

At  times  the  torture  would  return  and  slimy, 
gliding,  writhing,  biting,  stinging  adders  would 
wind  themselves  about  my  body  and  thrust  their 
forked  and  poisonous  tongues  into  my  sides. 

My  eyes  were  bleared  and  glistening  and 
pain  and  fright  enthralled  me,  and  I  prayed  and 
begged  and  entreated  that  death  might  relieve 
me. 

Not  one  man  in  one  hundred  thousand  could 
go  through  my  experience  and  emerge  with  life. 


A  shot  of  booze  has  wounded  many  a  man  to  his  death. 
All  saloon  keepers  argue  that  a  fly  is  a  pest. 

91 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


I  was  not  the  only  victim  in  my  ward  suffer- 
ing with  this  awful  curse. 

I  could  hear  the  crackling  flames  of  burning 
victims  and  the  shrieks  of  suffering  men.  Around 
their  dying  beds  could  be  seen  serpents  unfolding 
coil  after  coil  from  out  of  the  darkness,  brand- 
ishing their  forked  tongues  to  sting  them  and  lick 
their  blood  as  a  fierce  flame  licks  up  its  fuel. 

And  some  in  their  agony  begged  to  be  let 
plunge  into  a  lake  of  fire  to  escape  still  greater 
torture ;  others  would  stand  on  their  cot  shrieking 
with  agony  and  begging  their  attendants  to 
plunge  them  to  death  to  escape  further  awful 
tortures.  Demoniacal  ravings,  mutterings  and 
curses  made  a  perfect  bedlam  of  the  ward;  the 
whole  a  human  tragedy  terrible  to  witness. 
Others  were  moaning  and  crying,  shrieking  and 
cursing  and  dying,  while  several  were  uttering  the 
most  heart-piercing  and  piteous  prayers  for 
death  to  relieve  them  that  ever  passed  the  lips 
of  man. 


Don't  forget   that  advertised  whiskey  without   "A  headache 
in  it,"  contains  many  heartaches. 

92 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


Even  now  these  terrible  combats  come  at 
me  like  a  nightmare  and  are  often  re-enacted  in 
ghostly  pantomime  in  my  sleep. 

One  poor  victim,  formerly  a  well-known  Chi- 
cago business  man,  was  on  his  knees  with  his 
hands  clasped  in  prayer,  his  eyes  looking  upward, 
shrieking  that  death  might  come  at  once  to  relieve 
him,  which  it  did. 

The  most  impressive  and  saddest  sight  of  all 
I  witnessed  was  to  see  young  men  scarcely  out  of 
their  teens,  chained  to  cots  and  beds,  suffering 
with  delirium  tremens;  some  good  mother's  boy 
who  had  been  caught  and  pinioned  in  the  horrible 
grip  of  drink. 

The  deaths  from  delirium  tremens  through- 
out the  United  States  annually  is  said  to  be  ap- 
proximately fifty  thousand.  The  total  of  those 
who  die  from  acute  alcoholism  and  other  forms 
of  alcoholic  dissipation,  added  to  the  above,  would 
reveal  an  aggregate  that  would  astound  everyone. 

All  these  horrors  have  sprung  from  a  cause 


Mr.    Moderate    Drinker,    John    Barleycorn    is    quietly 
electrocuting  you  in  the  chair  of  booze. 

93 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


that  is  perfectly  curable,  that  is  easily  remediable 
and  absolutely  preventable. 

Mr.  Whiskey  Drinker,  just  keep  up  your 
present  batting  average  of  drink  and  that  day  is 
not  far  distant  when  you  will  be  a  "jim  jam"  boy, 
yourself. 

The  saloon  is  a  malignant,  disease-spreading 
nuisance,  causing  death,  misery  and  desolation 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  country. 
What  do  these  saloon  traffickers  care  if  a  few 
thousand  patrons  die  annually  from  delirium  tre- 
mens,  alcoholism,  and  its  attendant  evils?  What 
do  they  care  if  thousands  of  children  are  annually 
thrown  on  the  charity  of  the  public?  What  do 
they  care  for  the  misery  and  distress  caused  by 
drink? 

Look  in  every  direction  in  the  United  States. 
You  will  see  the  frightful,  intolerable  evidences 
of  the  devastation  of  drink. 

The  drink  traffic  is  the  cause  of  most  of  the 
crimes  committed;  causes  an  amazing  waste  of 


Whiskey  with  a  sting  and  a   rattlesnake's  sting  both  have 
the  same  effect. 

94 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


national  resources,  both  physical  and  human. 
Pauperism  is  its  offspring;  it  causes  the  great 
majority  of  divorces  and  other  domestic  difficulties 
which  fill  our  police  courts;  it  is  the  advance 
agent  of  the  social  evil ;  causes  thousands  of  pre- 
mature deaths,  chokes  our  prisons,  penitentiaries, 
jails,  insane  asylums,  reformatories,  and  hos- 
pitals ;  and  sentences  thousands  of  miserable  men 
and  yet  more  miserable  women  and  pitiable 
children  to  lead  most  wretched  lives.  It  blights 
the  body  and  soul  of  all  who  drink  it,  is  the  chief 
bane  and  ruin  of  thousands  of  homes  and  is  today 
the  one  black  spot  and  stain  on  the  glory,  pros- 
perity and  freedom  of  the  greatest  republic  the 
world  has  ever  known. 


95 


CHAPTER      EIGHT 


Life  in  Barrel  Houses  and  Cheap  Lodging  Houses 


A  BARREL  house  and  a  cheap  lodging  house 
•**  are  twins.  Where  one  exists  the  other 
lives.  They  are  the  twin  devils  of  crime  and 
debauchery. 

As  I  dropped  lower  in  the  scale  of  life  I 
naturally  gravitated  to  the  barrel  house.  My 
physical  condition  was  on  a  par  with  my  mental 
calibre.  My  step  was  slow  and  unsteady.  My  will 
power  was  completely  gone.  You  could  readily 
see  that  I  was  a  bum.  It  was  on  a  bitter  cold  day 
I  made  my  first  visit  to  a  barrel  house.  I  had  on 
summer  clothes,  such  as  they  were,  a  ragged  coat 


Saloon  keepers  are  in  favor  of  having  women  at  the  polls — 
at   the  North  and   South  poles. 

96 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


and  pants  all  frazzled.  My  nose  was  the  size 
and  color  of  a  big  ripe  plum,  garnished  with 
whiskey  blossoms. 

And  there  I  stood  and  such  a  pitiable  object 
of  despair  and  misery,  no  artist  could  depict.  I 
was  surrounded  by  a  lifeless,  insipid  mob  of  un- 
washed, hungry  and  thirsty  men.  I  did  not 
know  that  such  human  beings  existed — 
but  there  they  were  in  a  barrel  house  saloon,  right 
in  the  heart  of  Chicago,  and  this  was  only  one  of 
hundreds  of  similar  rat  holes  in  the  city. 

Sin,  vice,  crime,  filth,  drunkenness,  miser- 
able squalor  and  wretchedness,  poverty  and  dis- 
ease, degradation,  and  in  fact,  every  kind  of  con- 
ceivable wickedness  met  me  on  every  hand. 

There  is  a  great  cry  raised  about  the  barrel 
house  by  the  so-called  better  or  respectable 
saloon.  There  is  no  difference  in  any  of  them. 
A  drunkard  does  not  form  the  drinking  habit 
in  one  of  these  holes.  He  forms  the  habit  by 
drinking  in  a  "respectable"  saloon,  club  or  hotel 


When   sowing   your  wild   oats   don't   mix    too   much   rye 
with  them. 

97 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


bar.  A  barrel  house  is  the  last  stop  you  make 
on  your  way  to  the  grave.  It  is  the  only  drink 
hole  that  will  tolerate  a  down  and  out.  Drunk- 
ards are  not  made  in  barrel  houses — just  the 
finished  product  wind  up  there. 

You  can  get  a  "tub  of  suds"  and  a  "plate," 
a  bit  of  lunch,  for  a  nickel.  Whiskey  is  five 
cents  a  drink.  They  are  known  as  "Ky's," 
"Ponies"  and  "Five-Year-Olds."  The  beer  is 
the  cheapest  slop  made,  and  how  and  from  what 
the  booze  is  made,  no  one  knows — that  is,  those 
who  drink  it.  This  barrel  house  booze  is  stupe- 
fying and  will  make  a  normal  man  crazy.  As  long 
as  you  have  a  "jitney"  you  are  not  refused  a  drink. 
If  you  get  too  drunk  and  are  boisterous  or  ugly, 
out  you  go,  head  first.  Chairs  are  arranged 
along  the  wall  for  guests  and  if  a  "live  one" 
drops  in  he  is  pounced  upon  to  "buy."  The 
proprietor  encourages  this  procedure,  as  he  fig- 
ures every  nickel  helps  him.  The  average  barrel 
house  free  lunch  is  made  up  of  an  undesirable 


A  distiller  has  for  a  trademark  a  bee  hive.     That  means 
his   product   stings   his    customers. 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


mixture  of  scraps  and  junk,  highly  seasoned  and 
"embalmed"  meats  and  fish  and  alfalfa  soup,  that 
a  starving  dog  would  turn  his  back  on.  But  a 
drunken  man  will  grab  it  with  the  same  enjoy- 
ment a  sober  man  would  eat  turkey  at  a  wedding 
feast. 

When  a  man  begins  to  treat  his  organs  as 
though  they  were  the  works  of  a  dollar  watch 
evil  is  bound  to  result. 

Drink  led  me  to  these  low  and  filthy  haunts, 
the  vilest  quarters  in  the  world,  where  mendi- 
cancy and  drunkenness  and  vice  are  entwined 
together;  where  the  most  depraved  and  brutish 
of  men  mete  out  the  destructive  drug  to  hag- 
gard want  and  tattered  wickedness  for  the  poor 
price  of  a  nickel,  which  often  has  been  snatched 
by  theft  or  begged  on  the  street. 

For  a  scene  of  horrid  vice  and  filth  and 
distress  and  fury  and  faces  of  debauched  and 
wicked  men,  all  drawn  into  the  horrible  vortex 
and  there  fermenting  and  seething  in  misery 


The  booze  route  is  a  short  and  crooked  one  and  the  bell 
rings  every  time  you  start. 

99 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


and  disease,  a  man  might  search  the  world  all 
over  and  not  find  a  rival  to  the  cheap  saloons  and 
barrel  houses  on  West  Madison  and  North  and 
South  State  and  Clark  Street  and  the  neighbor- 
ing streets.  Why  the  police  and  health  depart- 
ment allow  them  to  exist  no  one  knows.  Maybe 
the  brewers  and  distillers  who  always  manage  to 
get  a  strangle  hold  on  the  business  could  answer 
the  question.  I  found  the  same  conditions 
existing  in  all  large  American  cities. 

I  lived  among  these  conditions  for  a  long 
time.  I  drank  the  whiskey,  partoook  of  the 
lunch,  and  slept  on  a  chair  when  permitted.  I 
would  go  out  on  the  street  occasionally,  beg  a  few 
nickels  from  old  friends,  then  shuffle  back  to 
some  low  groggery,  beg  or  buy  a  drink,  or  run 
into  a  live  one  (a  bum  who  had  a  little  change). 
I  would  hang  around  a  saloon  until  closing  time, 
one  o'clock,  and  then  be  thrown  out  in  the  street; 
nowhere  to  go,  no  home,  no  bed,  nothing;  walk 
the  streets  until  5  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Then 


As  a  saloon  keeper  rises  in  power  and  splendor  his 
patrons  sink  in  squalor  and  want. 

100 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


the  saloons  open  again.  All  first  comers  are 
given  the  regular  "Eye  Opener"  or  "Brain 
Duster,"  and  a  bowl  of  soup.  I  would  then  grab 
a  chair  and  go  to  sleep.  In  a  couple  of  hours 
along  would  come  the  bouncer,  and,  welting  me 
across  the  back  with  a  rubber  hose,  order  me 
out  for  a  new  bunch  of  down  and  outs  who 
wanted  to  sleep ;  two  hours  for  them  and  out  they 
go;  and  this  goes  on  all  day.  This  was  my  life 
day  after  day,  week  after  week.  A  great  army 
of  men  are  going  through  the  same  routine  in  all 
of  the  large  cities  of  the  United  States  today, 
and  particularly  in  Chicago  they  run  way  up 
in  the  thousands. 

The  great  majority  of  people  know  nothing 
about  how  this  army  of  floaters  exists,  and  under 
what  conditions  they  flourish.  A  tramp,  hobo,  bum 
and  beggar  are  all  alike.  The  only  difference 
is  the  smell.  The  general  public  pictures  this 
class  as  nothing  more  than  drunken,  shiftless, 
ragged  fugitives  trying  to  dodge  work,  content 


A  saloon  keeper  who  wears  a  diamond  is  not  a  gem. 
The  best  way  to  conquer  booze  is  to  shun  it. 

101 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


to  tramp  aimlessly  from  town  to  town  and  sub- 
,sist  upon  cold  victuals  begged  from  door  to  door. 
But  as  a  fact  the  strongest  instinct  in  a  hobo's 
life,  as  seen  in  Chicago,  New  York,  and  large 
centers  of  population,  is  to  eke  out  a  living  with- 
out rendering  compensation  in  labor.  From 
first  to  last  the  hobo  is  voluntarily  and  premedi- 
tatedly  a  parasite,  a  sponging  vagrant,  the  man 
of  all  men  who  never  works,  and  never  will. 
Once  he  goes  to  work  he  ceases  to  be  a  hobo. 

In  the  saloons,  barrel  houses,  and  lodging 
houses  throughout  the  city  I  found  a  cosmic  pop- 
ulation representing  nearly  every  country  in  the 
world.  The  most  were  unskilled  in  a  trade,  or  il- 
literate, or  both.  They  all  drank  whiskey.  If  they 
had  any  education  at  all  it  was  only  in  the  most 
rudimentary  sense.  When  it  was  whispered 
about  that  I  was  a  former  Alderman  I  was  looked 
upon  as  a  man  of  influence  and  when  in  trouble 
they  would  appeal  to  me  for  advice,  and  my  ad- 
vice would  be  along  the  lines  that  would  net  me 


Many  tombstone*  in  cemeteries  are  monuments  to  the 
saloon  traffic. 

102 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


a  drink  the  quickest.  These  vagabonds  all  lived 
a  life  of  chance,  the  same  as  I  did,  and  had  no 
occupation.  I  soon  learned  that  all  chronic 
hangers-on  in  pool  rooms,  saloons,  barrel  houses 
and  cheap  "flops"  are  an  improvident,  de- 
bauched, whiskey  soaked,  meandering  band  of 
worse  than  helpless  men.  They  hang  out  in  those 
vile  saloons  called  "Workingmen's  Home"  which 
in  reality  is  a  "Workingmen's  Morgue." 

A  saddening  sight  was  to  gaze  upon  the 
hundreds  of  gloomy  men  in  the  evening  of  old 
age,  starving,  storming  and  begging  for  whiskey 
in  saloons,  and  food  at  missions  and  in  bread 
lines;  with  mind  and  memory  dead,  physically 
broken  down  and  crippled,  waiting  for  the  wagon 
or  ambulance  to  back  up  and  close  their  book  of 
life. 

I  wish  every  man  and  woman  could  see  these 
things  as  I  have  seen  them,  and  as  they  exist  to- 
day. Then  it  would  not  take  long  to  sweep  from 
the  country  the  primary  cause — whiskey. 


The  raw  material  used  to  perpetuate  the  whiskey  business 
is  young  men  and  boys. 

103 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


There  is  a  natural  bond  of  sympathy  that 
draws  all  these  tramps,  bums,  hobos,  thieves  and 
ex-convicts  together,  a  bond  that  is  hard  for  the 
rest  of  the  world  to  understand  or  appreciate. 
The  underworld  is  loyal  to  its  own. 

Did  you  ever  sleep  in  a  cheap  Chicago 
lodging  house?  No!  Well,  you  are  lucky. 
There  is  a  lodging  house  capacity  in  Chicago 
for  100,000  men,  and  these  "Palaces"  are  mainly 
patronized  by  the  intemperate,  criminal  and 
shiftless  class,  presenting  in  many  ways  the  worst 
elements  of  our  population. 

The  cell  type  of  room  is  used  in  most  places 
and  the  price  of  a  bed  is  from  10  to  25  cents.  A 
cell  room  is  about  6x10.  The  floor  is  cement. 
The  side  walls  are  about  7  feet  in  height,  are 
usually  corrugated  iron,  in  some  instances  being 
wood.  The  bed  is  an  iron  frame  affair,  a  thin 
mattress  and  something  they  call  a  sheet,  pillow 
and  blanket  is  there,  if  you  wish  to  use  them. 
These  rooms  are  arranged  in  long1  rows  from 


When  the  liquor  interests   thrive,   the  people  suffer. 
All  are  equal  before  the  awful  scourge. 

104 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


the  front  of  the  building  to  the  rear,  the  only 
ventilation  coming  from  the  top  of  the  cell,  which 
is  covered  with  a  strong  wire  netting. 

When  one  retires  he  places  the  bed  against 
the  door  for  safety.  It  is  good  policy  to  hide 
your  clothes  under  your  mattress  so  that  some 
"guest"  will  not  raise  the  roof  of  wire  net- 
ting and  fish  up  your  wardrobe,  which  is  easily 
accomplished  by  placing  a  nail  in  a  broom.  Rob- 
beries are  frequent,  but  a  wise  man  sleeps  with 
his  clothes  on.  These  rooms  are  usually  dark, 
damp,  ill-ventilated  and  vermin  infected.  One 
night  a  man  infected  with  small  pox  or 
tuberculosis  may  occupy  a  room  and  next 
night  a  young  man  from  the  country  is  given 
the  same  bed.  The  "linen"  in  a  first-class  lodg- 
ing house  is  changed  whenever  the  bedmaker, 
usually  some  drunken  bum,  thinks  it  advisable. 
On  each  floor  are  toilet  and  washing  facilities 
that  in  most  cases  even  a  tramp  will  not  use.  I 
will  not  attempt  to  describe  the  bath  tub. 


The    history    of    alcoholism    is    tragedy,    murder,    starvation 
and  death. 

105 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


Every  lodging  house  in  Chicago  gets  filled 
with  vermin  and  dirt,  and  twice  a  year  every 
guest  is  routed  out  and  the  places  fumigated  and 
all  crawling  guests  "smoked  out." 

There  is  a  police,  fire,  and  sanitary  regula- 
tion of  lodging  houses,  and  in  the  months  I  was 
a  guest  at  nearly  every  one  in  the  city,  I  never 
saw  or  heard  of  an  inspector  in  any  one  of  them. 

I  was  once  pushed  out  of  a  West  Side  barrel 
house,  which  was  an  all  night  haunt  for  drunk- 
ards, and  went  to  "Hogan's  Flop,"  which  is  close 
to  the  Desplaines  Street  Police  Station,  where  one 
may  sleep  for  five  cents.  There  every  night 
are  herded  hundreds  of  men,  packed  in  a  large 
barn-like  room  on  the  bare  floor,  with  a  news- 
paper for  a  blanket,  like  pigs  in  a  stock  train.  I 
spent  a  few  nights  in  "Hogan's"  and  such  a  motley 
mass  of  humanity  was  never  marshalled  before. 
Singing,  shouting,  snoring,  and  blasphemy  was  the 
regular  program.  No  man  dare  take  off  his 
clothes  or  shoes,  for  if  you  slept  too  soundly 


Mercy  for  the  liquor  traffic  means  cruelty  to  mankind. 
The  only  way  to  quit  drinking — is   to  quit. 

106 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


one  of  the  guests  would  appropriate  your  ward- 
robe and  walk  off. 

It  is  conditions  such  as  I  have  enumerated 
that  are  giving  the  saloons  a  black  eye.  Thou- 
sands of  drinking  men  are  growing  to  hate  the 
whole  business,  and  the  way  it  is  conducted,  and 
despairing  of  ever  seeing  a  better  condition  of 
regulation  have  concluded  that  the  only  way  to 
get  back  at  it  is  to  put  it  entirely  out  of  existence. 
Another  thing  influencing  such  men  is  the  awful 
nature  of  the  beer  and  whiskey  sold  over  the 
bar.  It  has  changed  for  the  worse  in  the  last  few 
years.  A  New  York  bartender  who  has  grown 
grey  and  crippled  in  the  business  informed  me 
that  beer  would  not  keep  through  the  day  in  a 
barrel;  that  they  had  to  be  extremely  care- 
ful to  order  only  the  exact  amount  necessary  for 
if  they  had  only  one  keg  too  much  it  would  spoil. 
Another  said  to  me,  "I  sell  beer  all  day,  but  I 
never  drink  a  glass  of  it.  It  isn't  fit  for  a  white 
man  to  drink."  This  man  was  not  in  a  barrel 


The   moderate  drinker  is   the   great  stumbling   block  in   the 
path  of  prohibition. 

107 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


house  or  slum  dive,  but  in  one  of  the  best  saloons 
in  the  heart  of  Boston. 

The  barrel  house  and  low  saloon  dive  is  the 
spot  that  all  men  drop  to  and  seek  when  in  the 
final  beggary  of  hopeless  drunkenness.  They  are 
cast  out  from  men, .  loathsome,  despised  and 
perishing.  It  is  a  shocking,  awful  sight  to  see 
those  poor,  unfortunate  human  beings,  on  the  last 
lap  of  their  existence.  I  have  seen  scores  of  men 
drop  dead  in  different  barrel  houses  and  saloons 
and  hustled  to  the  morgue  in  a  most  mechanical 
manner.  Nobody  cared.  They  were  used  to 
such  scenes.  It  might  be  them  next.  They  didn't 
care.  All  rushed  to  a  drunkard's  grave,  without 
a  prayer,  uncoffined,  unwept  and  unknown.  The 
same  conditions  exist  today.  Nobody  cares. 


108 


CHAPTER      NINE 
Police,    Police   Courts,    Police  Stations   and   Jails 


•"THE  happiest,  proudest,  grandest  moment  in  a 
policeman's  life  is  when  he  can  "pinch" 
a  fellow  man,  walk  up  to  the  patrol  box,  call  up 
the  station  and  say:  "This  is  McCasey.  Send 
the  wagon  to  Harrison  and  State  street  at  once. 
Have  a  desperate  divil  in  tow." 

McCasey  has  a  poor,  drunken  bum  by  the 
collar.  The  crowd  grows.  McCasey  yells, 
"G'wan,  move  'long,  there,"  swinging  his  club 
threateningly  at  the  mob.  The  wagon  arrives. 
In  goes  the  drunk.  McCasey  yells,  "Book  this 
man  for  disorderly  conduct."  Up  the  street  he 


Sunday  closing  is  an   "eye  opener"   for  the  saloon  keepers. 
A  seasoned  drinker  makes  poor  business  timber. 

109 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


struts.  At  ten  next  morning  the  clerk  of  the 
police  court  yells,  "John  Jones  and  Officer  Mc- 
Casey." 

The  Judge — "What's  this  man  charged 
with?" 

The  Clerk— "Disorderly  conduct." 

Officer  McCasey — "Sign  a  waiver." 

This  waiver  means  you  will  be  tried  at  once 
by  the  presiding  judge  and  you  waive  your  rights 
to  a  jury  trial. 

The  Clerk — "Be  sworn."  Jones  and  officer 
are  sworn. 

Officer  McCasey — "I  found  this  man  yelling 
in  front  of  a  saloon  at  Harrison  and  State  Streets 
and  he  was  arguing  with  a  dago  about  the  price 
of  bananas,  creating  a  great  disturbance,  and 
attracting  a  crowd.  I  told  him  to  move  along.  He 
said  he  was  an  American  citizen  and  called  me 
a  furriner  and  stiff." 

The  Judge — "Had  you  been  drinking, 
Jones?" 


Everyone  plugs  a  rat  role.     Why  not  a  drink  hole? 
Drink  lashes  a  man  to  the  mast  of  destruction. 

110 


MY    LAST     DRINK 


John  Jones— "Yes,  sir;  I  had  been  in  'Kinky 
Dink's'  joint  and  had  two  'tubs  of  suds,'  but  I 
wasn't  drunk,  your  honor." 

Officer  McCasey— "Your  honor,  he  was 
drunk,  sor,  and  when  I  told  him  to  move,  he  re- 
sisted me." 

The  Judge — "In  what  way  did  he  re- 
sist you?" 

Officer  McCasey — "He  said  he  would  not  al- 
low any  'bull  neck'  to  order  him  around  when 
he  was  minding  his  own  business." 

John  Jones — "I  have  worked  steadily  for 
two  years  as  a  laborer  for  the  Crane  Company; 
was  never  arrested  in  my  life,  and  the  officer 
clubbed  and  struck  me,  and  I  have  laid  in  this 
rotten,  louse-bound  Clark  Street  Police  station 
since  yesterday  noon,  a  dry  crust  of  bread  to  eat, 
with  muddy  water  they  called  coffee,  to  drink, 
and  the  lockup  keeper  would  not  notify  my  family 
or  friends.  Your  honor,  the  officer  was  half- 
stewed  himself." 


Big  Business  is  using  a  big  club  and  is  effectually  batting 

booze. 

Ill 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


Officer  McCasey — "I  have  seen  this  man  in 
State  Street  before,  and  always  drunk." 

John  Jones — "I  was  never  drunk  in  my — " 

The  Judge — "That'll  do,  Jones,  you  are  a 
dangerous  man,  a  menace  to  society,  and  the 
sooner  men  like  you  are  put  away  the  better  for 
the  community.  I  think  about  six  months  in  the 
Bridewell  will  make  a  good  citizen  of  you." 

The  Clerk — "Horace  Johnson  and  Officer 
Robinson."  And  this  is  the  way  it  goes  from  day 
to  day  in  all  the  police  courts  of  Chicago.  No 
friends,  no  pull,  with  the  police  knocking 
and  pounding,  on  you  go.  A  policeman's  repu- 
tation for  efficiency  is  based  on  the  number  of  ar- 
rests he  makes,  and  if  he  is  lucky  enough  to  con- 
vict some  one  he  will  get  special  commendation 
from  his  superior  officers.  The  Cossacks  of 
Russia  have  nothing  on  many  men  on  the  police 
force  of  Chicago.  The  club  and  the  concealed, 
but  too  readily  handy  gun,  are  still  the  signs  by 
which  a  policeman  conquers. 

"Will  you  have  a  drink?"  is  not  asked  by  employers  today, 
but,  "Do  you  drink?" 

112 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


A  plain  clothes  man  can  stop  any  citizen  on 
flhe  street,  night  or  day,  ask  an  array  of  in« 
suiting  questions,  "frisk  you,"  (search  your  pock- 
ets), give  you  a  kick  or  a  push  and  tell  you  to 
beat  it.  A  man  thus  accosted  is  naturally  in- 
censed, makes  some  pretty  sharp  replies  and  says, 
"Who  are  you?"  Then  the  plain  clothes  man 
will  throw  open  his  coat,  exhibit  his  star,  and 
say: 

"I'm  an  officer.  Don't  give  me  any  of  your 
lip  or  I'll  run  you  in.  Good  notion  to  do  it  any- 
way. Where  do  you  live?  What's  your  name? 
What  are  you  doing  in  this  neighborhood?" 

The  citizen  is  angry,  confused  and  scared, 
and  if  he  is  imprudent  enough  to  ask  the  officer 
his  number  or  name  he  is  liable  to  get  a  slam  in 
the  mouth.  Thousands  of  respectable  Chicago 
citizens  have  had  this  experience  and  are  still 
having  it,  every  day  in  the  year. 

There  ought  to  be  some  law  or  measure  to 
correct  the  present  evils  of  the  police  force.  A 


Drink  and  graft  are  the  twin  evil»  of  the  century. 
A  boozer  never  fools  anyone  but  himself. 

113 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


policeman  does  not  regard  his  position  as  a  post 
of  responsibility,  but  as  a  piede  of  property.  No 
matter  how  inefficient,  undisciplined,  barbarous 
or  corrupt  he  may  be  he  feels  he  is  under  the  pro- 
tecting wing  of  the  civil  service,  usually  has  some 
unseen  political  pull,  and  always  manages  to  keep 
his  grip  on  his  position  unless  he  is  convicted  be- 
fore a  court  of  law. 

The  police  should  be  like  an  army,  the  re- 
sponsive instrument  of  a  leader,  then  if  there 
were  corruption  the  people  would  know  whom  to 
blame ;  if  efficiency  results  the  people  would  know 
whom  to  trust  and  commend. 

If  we  could  by  some  means  constitute  all  the 
members  of  the  police  force  agents  for  the  social 
betterment  of  the  city,  what  an  influence  for  good 
they  might  exert — and  this  without  any  diminu- 
tion of  their  authority  as  officers  of  the  law.  They 
are  today,  almost  without  exception,  men  of  med- 
ium calibre,  each  man  using  his  own  judgment, 
club  or  gun  at  any  time  or  place  he  sees  fit.  He 


The  man  behind  the  gun  in  war  is  not  more  deadly  than  the 
man  behind  the  bar  in  peace. 

114 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


figures  that  he  is  clothed  with  power — why  not 
use  it? 

A  policeman  is  the  same  whether  in  Chicago, 
or  New  York,  Kankakee,  or  Podunk.  A  star,  a 
gun,  a  club,  has  the  same  effect  on  the  human 
mind  made  up  of  police  material  the  world  over. 
Of  130,000  arrests  made  in  Chicago  during  twelve 
months,  one-half  were  discharged,  which  shows 
how  much  common  sense  is  used  in  "running  in" 
citizens.  If  it  were  not  for  the  good  judgment  of 
the  Municipal  Court  Judges  the  police  would  have 
one-half  of  the  population  of  Chicago  continually 
in  jail. 

I  will  say,  however,  that  I  was  courteously 
treated  by  all  policemen  and  police  offi- 
cials. But  what  I  saw  and  learned  of  police  sys- 
tem and  authority  was  a  revelation. 

The  most  pernicious  parody  on  humanitar- 
ianism  ever  evolved  by  the  mind  of  man  are  the 
barbarous,  foul-smelling,  vermin-infected,  ill- 
ventilated  garbage  boxes,  called  cells,  in  the 


Look  out  for  the  man  who  boast,  that  he  only  drink,  with 
hi.  meal..     In  a  few  year,  he  will  have  no  meal*. 

115 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


Chicago  police  stations,  and  they  are  to  be 
avoided  like  poison.  Positive  neglect  and 
insult  is  the  order  in  all  of  them  and  it  is  not 
hearsay  with  me,  as  I  was  a  "guest"  in  most  of 
them.  I  was  locked  up  at  the  Central  Station,  in 
La  Salle  Street  near  Randolph.  I  was  put  in  a 
cell  at  three  o'clock,  P.  M.,  having  been  arrested 
for  passing  a  worthless  check,  to  procure  money 
for  whiskey.  I  was  put  in  a  cell  about  8  by  10, 
with  a  plank  bed  on  either  side,  no  bedding  of  any 
kind,  no  water,  and  disgraceful  toilet  facilities. 
A  cup  of  cold  water  was  shoved  in  about  eight 
o'clock,  nothing  to  eat,  but  fortunately  I  had  a 
little  change.  I  gave  an  attendant  fifty 
cents  to  purchase  me  a  sandwich.  He  re- 
turned in  about  five  minutes  with  an  egg 
sandwich  that  he  must  have  had  in  stock. 
The  bread  was  like  rubber  and  the  egg 
was  certainly  made  of  asbestos.  I  asked  him  for 
my  change,  all  the  money  I  had  in  the  world.  He 
replied,  "I'm  no  errand  boy,  and  if  you  wasn't  a 


"Free  drinks  and  free  soup"  are  the  mirages  of  hope  for  a 
down  and  out. 

116 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


piker  you  wouldn't  ask  for  change."  If  you  ever 
think  you  are  going  to  be  locked  up  have  your 
change  in  nickels  and  pennies  and  carry  them  in 
your  shoes. 

At  five  o'clock  a  ragged,  dirty,  vermin-in- 
fected old  man  was  placed  in  the  cell  with  me; 
then  two  young  boys  about  15  and  17  came  in  for 
"sassing"  an  officer;  at  nine  o'clock  in  came  two 
more  drunks  and  a  holdup  man.    The  adjoining 
cell  was  filled  with  a  howling,  drunken  mob  of 
men.    By  twelve  o'clock  eleven  men  were  huddled 
in  my  cell.    At  each  new  arrival  the  lockup  keeper 
would  rattle  his  bunch  of  keys,  ram  the  cell  door 
with  a  bang ;  officers,  desk  sergeants,  and  hangers 
on  in  the  office  near  the  cells  were  talking,  whis- 
tling, laughing.      There  was  no  sleep  for  anyone. 
Nobody  cared.      Nobody  tried  to  maintain  order. 
If  you  wanted  anything  to  eat,  or  a  friend  called 
on  the  telephone,  you  paid  for  it.     You  don't  get 
anything  for  nothing  in  a  police  station  but  an 
ugly  look,  and  curt  reply  and  a  "rap  in  the  jaw" 


The  sober  public   has   the  number  of  every  drinking  man. 
A  tramp  is  the  finished  product  on  parade. 

117 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


if  you  talk  back.  The  brave  policeman  has  you 
in  his  toils  and  if  you  are  wise  you  will  govern 
yourself  accordingly. 

A  well-dressed,  middle  aged  man  was  thrown 
in  about  one  o'clock,  picked  up  at  Madison  and 
Dearborn  Streets  because  he  looked  "suspicious" 
to  a  policeman.  After  ten  minutes  resi- 
dence he  yelled :  "My  God,  what  a  hell  hole  of  a 
place."  He  was  kept  until  morning,  was  never 
booked,  and  turned  out.  This  is  a  favorite  pas- 
time of  policemen — locking  a  man  up  for  a  few 
hours  and  letting  him  go  without  booking  any 
charge  against  him.  It  seems  almost  a  crime  that 
a  policeman  is  vested  with  such  power,  and  there 
ought  to  be  some  way  to  make  the  municipality 
responsible  for  the  damage,  disgrace  and  humilia- 
tion a  citizen  is  often  subjected  to. 

There  are  forty-five  precinct  station  jails, 
the  detective  bureau  jail,  the  county  jail  and  the 
Bridewell  in  the  city  of  Chicago.  Of  these  jails 
only  about  a  dozen  are  fit  for  habitation.  Nine- 


Thousands  of  bright  and  shining  lights  have  been  dimmed 
by  drink. 

118 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


teen  are  underground.  Through  eleven  runs  an 
open  sewer.  This  sewer  is  a  trough  flushed  by 
running  water.  It  represents  the  toilet  facilities. 
When  there  are  more  than  two  persons  in  a  cell 
they  must  sleep  on  the  floor  beside  the  open  sewer. 
Frequently  eight  or  ten  men  are  herded  together 
in  a  cell  ten  feet  square  or  smaller. 

It  ought  not  to  require  any  argument  to  con- 
vince any  fair  minded  man  that  the  municipality 
has  no  right  to  impair  or  shatter  the  health  of 
those  who  are  unfortunate  enough  to  be  thrown 
into  a  police  station.  The  cells  should  have  sun- 
light and  pure,  fresh  air  and  prisoners  should 
be  protected  against  disease  breeding  germs  and 
given  modern  sanitary  conditions.  The  only 
humane  and  sanitary  police  stations  I  was  locked 
in  were  in  Pittsburg,  Pa.,  and  Los  Angeles,  Cal. 
In  New  York,  Philadelphia,  Boston,  Baltimore 
and  other  eastern  cities  the  jail  conditions  were 
fair.  But  who  cares?  Ninety  per  cent  of  all 
inmates  I  met  were  victims  directly  and  indirectly 


An   intoxicated   man   is   not   fit   company    for   man   or   beast. 
Booze  and  bamboozle  are  twins  of  trouble. 

119 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


of  alcohol.  Knock  strong  drink  out  of  any 
community  and  note  how  quickly  police  sta- 
tions, jails,  prisons,  and  penitentiaries  will  show 
an  amazing  falling  off  in  population. 

A  lockup  keeper  or  policeman  who  has 
even  a  drop  of  human  kindness  in  his  system  is 
more  than  rare.  The  average  policeman  thinks 
everybody  except  himself  is  dishonest  or  a  crook, 
and  he  deals  for  so  brief  a  time  with  individuals, 
that  the  formation  of  the  customary  links  of  hu- 
man kindliness  is  impossible.  The  worst  charac- 
ters frequently  return,  the  best  stay  a  short  time, 
are  discharged  and  lost  sight  of,  so  a  "copper" 
figures  that  any  act  of  kindness  meets  apparently 
with  no  reward. 

The  police,  and  especially  the  "dicks,"  (de- 
tectives and  plain  clothes  men) ,  have  stool  pigeons 
and  squealers  in  every  district  in  Chicago  that  they 
can  go  to,  and  unearth  nearly  any  crime  they 
wish.  This  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  when 
National  political  conventions  are  held,  or  any  im- 


You  will  find  the  "no  whiskey"  end  the  better  end  of  life. 
Walk  the  straight  line  and  avoid  the  bread  line. 

120 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


portant  personage  visits  Chicago  that  means  a 
general  outpouring  of  the  people,  word  goes  out 
to  round  up  all  pickpockets,  thieves,  burglars,  con- 
fidence men,  hotel  thieves,  etc.,  for  a  few  days. 
The  police  gather  them  in  in  short  order,  know 
their  names,  their  hangouts  and  their  special  line 
of  work.  While  known  to  the  police,  for  the  re- 
mainder of  the  year  they  are  allowed  to  ply  their 
avocations  unmolested,  unless  they  get  careless  or 
bold  and  some  citizen  grabs  them.  There  is 
nothing  more  remarkable  in  this  drama  of  theft 
than  the  perfect  understanding  which  unites  the 
criminal  lamb  with  the  wolfish  upholder  of  the 
law.  The  thief  looks  to  his  supposed  opponent 
for  protection,  and  looks  not  in  vain  as  long  as 
he  is  a  fairly  good  producer  and  he  only  gives 
them  up  to  justice  when  they  fail  to  yield  the 
coin  in  abundance.  Nobody  cares! 

No  writer  or  dramatist  that  ever  lived  could 
depict  this  situation  in  its  entirety  as  it  exists 
today  and  it  is  a  grand  tribute  to  these  omnipo- 


Only  a  coward  tapers  off — a  brave  man  quits  abruptly. 
A  nightcap  is  a  handicap. 

121 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


tent  guardians  of  law  and  order  and  to  their 
human  ingenuity,  to  say  that  few  of  them  fall 
below  their  opportunity,  not  only  in  Chicago,  but 
in  every  city  in  the  United  States. 

Nature  seems  to  have  armed  every  police- 
man's hand  against  his  fellows.  He  seems  to  be 
to  the  manner  born  and  built  upon  oppression. 
Policemen  are  not  made,  they  are  born — it's  a 
disease. 

What  is  it  in  the  life  and  atmosphere  of 
America  which  encourages  and  protects  crime,  or 
rather  elevates  crime  to  a  level  of  excellence  un- 
known elsewhere? 

I  met  a  pickpocket  in  the  Warren  Avenue 
police  station  who  had  been  arrested  at  Madison 
and  Kedzie  avenues.  He  said  a  policeman  had 
doubled  crossed  him  and  let  English  Dan,  a  well- 
known  pickpocket  and  two  confederates  have  that 
neighborhood  and  the  Madison  and  Kedzie  cars. 

"My,"  he  said  to  me,  "a  lot  of  'bulls'  in  this 
district  wouldn't  be  wearing  diamonds  if  we  didn't 


John  Barleycorn  is  chasing  thousands  "Over  the  Hill*  to  the 
,  Poor  House." 

122 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


help  pay  for  them.  They'd  sit  down  in  some 
saloon  and  actually  cry.  He  won't  book  me.  I've 
got  the  goods  on  him  and  he  knows  it."  He  wasn't 
booked,  either.  He  was  released  in  a  couple  of 
hours  and  went  with  a  couple  of  officers  who  said 
he  was  wanted  in  a  saloon  a  few  blocks 
east  of  the  station.  I  met  him  a  few  weeks  later 
and  he  was  "working  pockets"  on  State  Street, 
and  said: 

"I'm  doing  pretty  well,  thank  you."  This 
young  man  considers  his  business  legitimate.  He 
intimated  that  he  pays  to  operate.  The  man  of 
the  underworld  figures,  and  not  without  reason, 
that  a  good  many  police  officers  are  a  far 
greater  menace  to  the  community  than  the  crim- 
inal, and  some  recent  police  convictions  give 
weight  to  the  opinion  voiced  by  crooks. 

I  spent  a  few  weeks  in  the  Cook  county  jail 
and  I  found  the  same  criminal  atmosphere  and 
aspect  here  as  in  other  restraining  institutions. 
Two  and  three  men  were  crowded  in  small,  foul 


Many   men  who   habitually    fool    themselves,   are  a  joke   to 
their  acquaintances. 

123 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


smelling  cells,  the  sanitary  condition  of  which 
ought  to  receive  a  little  attention  from  the  health 
department. 

Daily  from  nine-thirty  to  eleven-thirty,  A.  M., 
and  from  one-thirty  to  three-thirty  P.  M.,  seven  or 
eight  hundred  inmates  are  ushered  into  the  Bull 
Pen  for  exercise.  This  is  a  barn-like  room, 
about  250  feet  long  and  40  feet  wide  and  here  for 
four  hours  daily  crooks  of  all  kinds  meet  and  talk 
and  plot,  without  hindrance.  There  you  may 
meet  the  murderer,  the  heat  of  passion  in  which 
he  committed  his  crime  forgotten,  tranquil, 
penitent,  and  self-possessed;  the  thief,  swindler, 
pickpocket — with  all  their  wits  about  them — the 
burglar,  holdup  man,  and  forger.  All  these  and 
hundreds  of  young  men  just  edging  to  manhood, 
locked  up  upon  some  petty  charge,  listening  to 
the  wonderful  recitals  of  these  hardened  and  hab- 
itual crooks.  This  Cook  county  jail  bull  pen  is 
nothing  more  or  less  than  a  school  of  instruction 
for  criminals.  One  young  man  of  twenty-three 


Booze  has  crippled  every  human  being   that  ever  made  his 
acquaintance. 

124 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


years  of  age,  looking  like  a  boy  of  seventeen, 
explained  to  a  group  of  willing  listeners  how  he 
worked  hotels  and  robbed  guests  while  they  slept ; 
told  of  how  to  work  transoms  without  waking  any 
one ;  told  how  to  get  duplicate  pass  keys  from 
chamber  girls  in  hotels,  and  how  to  place  your 
hand  under  a  sleeper's  pillow  without  disturbing 
him.  A  pickpocket  gave  exhibitions  of  his  skill, 
even  picking  my  pocket  while  my  coat  was  but- 
toned tightly.  It  was  so  with  each  adept.  Boast- 
ful, garrulous,  but  at  the  same  time  imparting  a 
crime  knowledge  to  a  class  of  young  men  and 
toughs  ready  to  launch  out  and  give  matters  a 
trial.  Nobody  cares. 

It  would  seem  as  though  all  the  vice  and 
crime  and  sin  and  shame  in  the  community  had 
been  jammed  into  this  army  of  human  beings  and 
they  were  huddled  together  to  instruct  each 
other  in  their  particular  line  of  crime  and  boast 
of  their  awful  misdeeds.  The  enthusiasm  some 
of  these  men  evidenced  in  giving  the  details  of 


A  whiskey  drinker  often  wonders  why  he  is  at  the  tail  end 
of  the  precession.        Your  friends  don't. 

125 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


their  criminal  cleverness  plainly  showed  that 
many  possessed  ability  and  talent  that  would 
make  for  success  in  any  legitimate  calling. 

Society  can  forgive  crime ;  it  will  not  forgive 
imprisonment.  Whole  communities  may  know  that 
a  man  is  guilty  of  criminal  acts,  and  he  may  be 
punished  by  heavy  fines — yet  men  and  women  do 
not  shrink  from  him — he  has  been  punished,  not 
put  in  prison.  On  the  other  hand  the  ex-convict 
is  instantly  known  as  such,  branded  by  unmistak- 
able evidences.  Sore  at  society,  health  shattered, 
a  shifty  bearing,  a  bitter  distrust  of  his  fellow- 
men,  no  friends  or  honest  acquaintances,  and  with 
the  police  continually  picking  him  up  and  annoy- 
ing him,  he  has  no  ambition  to  win  back  his  place 
in  life.  He  is  an  outcast.  If  men  learn  he  has 
been  in  prison  they  refuse  to  work  with  him.  All 
mankind  instinctively  shuns  him,  not  because  he 
has  done  wrong,  but  because  he  has  paid  the 
penalty  in  confinement.  When  crimes  are  com- 
mitted the  police  sweep  through  the  city  and  pick 


Wake  up,  Mr.  Drinker,  and  take  stock  of  yourself — a  calm, 
cold,  critical  inventory — then  try  to  cash  it. 

126 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


up  every  poor  devil  that  has  ever  done  time,  hold 
him  for  hours  or  days  as  the  case  may  be,  with- 
out evidence,  on  the  police  principle,  once  a 
criminal  always  a  criminal.  That  is  not  always 
true,  but  once  a  policeman  always  a  policeman  is 
absolutely  true. 

Many  a  young  man  thrown  in  a  pen-like  cell 
in  the  county  jail,  owing  to  inability  to  secure  bail, 
lays  there  for  months,  awaiting  indictment  and 
trial.  Even  if  he  is  released  he  passes  with  slow, 
steady  tread  out  of  the  jail  into  freedom  feeling 
that  he  was  wrongfully  incarcerated,  and  across 
his  soul  a  deep  black  shadow  is  photographed 
against  society.  He  feels  that  he  has  been 
branded  a  criminal.  He  goes  to  the  saloon  for 
companionship. 

It  is  only  natural,  in  these  circumstances, 
that  he  should  succumb  when  a  comrade  on  the 
street  whispers,  "You  and  I  are  fools  to  work  for 
a  beggarly  pittance  when  we  can  make  a  little 
easy  money.  Others  are  doing  it  everywhere. 


Don't   gold   brick   yourself   with   the   delusion    that   you   can 
quit  whenever  you  want  to — you  can't  do  it! 

127 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


Look  around  you,  who  are  the  big  men  in  our 
ward  but  the  saloon  keeper  and  the  alderman, 
and  who  but  them  wears  diamonds  and  fancy 
vests?  And  how  did  they  make  their  money? 
By  working  hard  like  you  and  I?  Not  in  a 
thousand  years!" 

Society  had  imposed  on  him  the  conditions 
that  made  his  fall  inevitable.  So  the  problems 
of  crime  are  world-wide  and  fundamentally  one; 
and  if  alcohol  and  drink  is  not  the  father  of  it  all 
why  is  it  that  in  communities  where  drink  disap- 
pears, crime  disappears  with  it? 


128 


CHAPTER      TEN 


In  the   Bread   Line 


XV 7  ERE  you  ever  in  a  bread  line?     No?     Well, 
**         I  was. 

At  nine-thirty  a  tramp  yelled: — '"The  Java 
Chariot  is  coming."  A  ragged,  half-drunken, 
starving,  shivering  horde  of  old  and  young  men 
rushed  to  the  bread  line  on  Jefferson  Street  as  if 
by  magic.  The  cry  of  "the  Chariot  is  coming" 
is  relayed  to  saloons,  barrel  houses,  and  lodging 
houses,  throughout  the  entire  Chicago  district 
from  Canal  and  Halsted  and  Lake  Street  to  Harri- 
son. From  dark  doorways,  alleys,  and  under- 
the-sidewalk  joints  they  rush  and  slink  and  shuf- 


Alcohol  affects  the  germ  cells  and  fills  the  prison  cells. 
Walk  the  straight  line  and  avoid  the  bread  line. 

129 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


fle  with  all  the  haste  their  sodden  and  stiffened 
limbs  will  allow.  There  I  stood  in  the  midst  of 
this  motley  group  of  wrecked  and  drunken  hu- 
manity, hundreds  of  whom  had  seen  better  days, 
awaiting  my  turn  to  get  a  cup  of  coffee  and  a 
sandwich.  Next  in  line  behind  me  was  a  former 
well-known  Chicago  merchant,  a  trembling  alco- 
holic wreck,  with  scarcely  enough  vitality  to  move, 
and  his  mind  and  memory  completely  shattered 
from  the  effects  of  drink.  It  was  a  bitter  cold 
night  and  before  my  companion  reached  the 
"Chariot"  for  his  hand-out,  he  fell  numb  and  help- 
less in  the  street.  A  couple  of  huskies  dragged 
him  across  the  street  to  the  curb  and  soon  the 
rattle  of  the  "wagon"  was  heard  coming.  He 
was  dumped  into  the  patrol  wagon  as  you 
would  throw  in  a  bag  of  feed,  and  before 
the  station  was  reached  he  was  dead.  Nobody 
cared;  everybody  in  the  district  was  daily  wit- 
nessing similar  events. 

For  nearly  two  hours  several  hundred  men 


In    the    slimy    trail    of    the    alcoholic    serpent    you    will    find 
nothing  but  worry  and  misery. 

130 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


and  boys  stood  in  the  cold  waiting  for  their  "cof- 
fee an',"  when  suddenly  the  long,  slow,  shuffling 
"Bread  Line"  began  to  move  like  a  great  snake, 
tattered  in  garb  and  spirit.  A  sight  and  study  is 
the  bread  line.  Here  a  young  man  of  twenty, 
drunk  and  ragged,  there  an  old  man  of  sixty, 
pinched  and  half  frozen,  stamping  with  alternate 
feet  upon  the  sidewalk,  others  flapping  their  arms 
and  dancing  to  keep  warm ;  hundreds  of  able  and 
brilliant  has-beens  with  bloated  faces  and  bleared 
eyes,  and  among  them  many  sober  men,  honest 
mechanics,  clerks,  forced  in  the  line  through  sick- 
ness and  industrial  conditions,  or  temporarily  em- 
barrassed, and  there  was  also  the  full  quota  of 
out-of-works  and  never-works  from  every  strata 
of  life. 

The  Bread  Line  managers  do  not  preach  to 
the  throng,  but  feed  them  and  wish  them  good 
luck  and  Godspeed. 

For  an  hour  the  long  serpentine  line  which 
rolls  and  unfolds  before  you  grows  in  length  and 


When  a  boozer  comes  home  sober  it  is  a  surprise  party. 
Every  day  of  grace  for  a  saloon  is  a  disgrace. 

131 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


then  you  have  a  clearer  impression  of  the  types 
it  contains.  It  is  an  amazing  aggregation  of 
humanity  rather  than  isolated  men.  There  is  the 
tall  man,  the  short  man,  and  always  the  old  man, 
the  foreigner,  professional  bum,  clerk  and  boy. 
The  whiskey  faces,  the  unshaven  faces,  the 
tightly  buttoned  coats,  the  lack  of  overcoats,  the 
sunken  and  pale  face  and  slouching  knee,  with 
the  raven  hunger  plainly  apparent,  all  these 
form  a  composite  and  pitiful  panorama  of  pov- 
erty, with  that  everlasting  stamp  of  drink,  drink, 
drink,  plainly  indicated  in  the  features  of  ninety 
per  cent  of  them. 

I  recollect  a  bitter  cold  night  in  the  winter 
of  1914  that  again  found  me  in  the  bread  line  on 
Jefferson  Street.  It  was  an  awful  night.  There 
I  stood  waiting  my  turn,  no  overcoat,  cracked 
shoes,  with  sleet  in  the  air  and  slush  on  the 
ground.  I  was  faint  from  lack  of  food  and  nerv- 
ous and  shaking  from  over  indulgence. 

As  I  neared  the  "Chariot"  I  espied  an  old 


No  man  can  keep  sound  in  body  and  mind  and  fill  his  system 
with  alcohol. 

132 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


friend,  Mr.  Malcolm  McDowell,  who  furnished 
and  superintended  the  distribution  of  the  coffee 
and  rolls.  He  was  carefully  eyeing  the  battered 
and  tattered  crowd  as  they  shuffled  lazily  along 
for  their  little  bite. 

Suddenly  Mr.  McDowell  spied  me,  a  wreck  of 
my  former  self.  With  an  astonished  and  pitying 
look,  he  recognized  me  with  a  slight  nod.  When 
I  had  finished  my  "meal"  and  got  out  of  the 
line  Mr.  McDowell  came  over,  took  me  by  the 
hand,  and  gave  me  a  few  words  of  friendly  ad- 
vice, handed  me  five  dollars,  and  said :  "For  God's 
sake,  Alderman,  get  yourself  together ;  get  out  of 
this  condition  you  are  in,  come  to  me  when  you 
are  sober  and  I  will  assist  you  in  any  way  that 
will  rehabilitate  you." 

His  advice  was  unheeded — whiskey  was  my 
master. 

After  leaving  me  Mr.  McDowell  walked  up 
and  down  the  line  giving  here  and  there  "banner" 
(bed)  money  to  some  homeless  man,  speaking  a 


Booze  is  a.  coward  when  confronted  by  a  brave  man. 
Alcohol,    whiskey,    beer,    wine,   all    spell   murder. 

133 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


word  to  Jack  or  Mike,  promising  to  secure  work 
for  others,  and  for  several  winters  kept  this  grand 
humanitarian  work  going. 

Several  hungry  hobos  would  get  their  bit  and 
drop  to  the  foot  of  the  line  and  would  work  their 
way  wearily  back  for  more  to  eat.  A  repeater 
in  a  bread  line  is  certainly  hungry,  and  while 
repeaters  were  often  discovered  Mr.  McDowell's 
orders  were  to  turn  no  man  away,  arguing  that  if 
a  man  would  edge  his  way  along  in  the  line  for 
an  hour,  in  the  bitter  cold,  he  certainly  needed 
food  and  would  be  supplied. 

A  strapping  young  fellow  in  the  line  behind 
me,  two-thirds  drunk,  said  he  had  been  down  the 
line  nightly  and  during  the  day  "worked"  every- 
thing else  on  "tap"  for  all  they  were  worth  and 
slept  at  night  in  the  Municipal  Lodging  House. 
He  said  he  got  food  during  the  day  at  the  free 
lunches  in  cheap  saloons  and  barrel  houses. 

The  most  of  those  in  line  were  old,  broken 
down  men,  and  professional  tramps  and  hobos  of 


For  a  sober  man  the  battle  of  life  is  not  a  battle  of  strife. 
A  "brain  cluster"  puts  cobwebs  in  your  vision. 

134 


MY       LAST       DRINK 


a  most  shiftless  type.  Here  and  there  and  every- 
where I  mixed  in  "with  the  bunch"  and  by  their 
own  confessions  to  one  another  and  made  in  boast- 
ing talk  to  me,  as  the  result  of  inquiry,  they  had 
been  "bumming"  around  the  country  during  the 
warm  months,  begging  and  stealing,  but  came  to 
Chicago  for  the  winter  because  as  one  of  them  put 
it  to  me:  "Chicago  is  about  the  only  city  in  the 
United  States  where  things  (food,  etc.)  come  so 
easy  and  no  questions  asked.  You  can  pound  dp 
sidewalks  in  'Chi/  (walking  the  streets),  night 
or  day  and  de  'harness  bull'  (policeman)  never 
raps."  This  man  said  he'd  be  off  with  the  robins 
to  his  "country  home,"  and  back  with  the  snow- 
birds to  spend  the  cold  snap  in  "Chi." 

The  law  against  begging  and  mendicancy 
seems  to  be  a  dead  letter  in  Chicago.  There  are 
thousands  of  professional  alcoholic  beggars,  men 
and  boys,  prowling  through  the  city  every  day, 
wringing  the  dimes  from  a  sober,  sympathetic 
public. 


A  snake  and  a  corkscrew  is   the   fraternal  badge  of  liquor 
dispensers. 

135 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


The  evils  of  drunkenness  are  known  to  all, 
and  cause  all  this  misery.  Alcohol  rapidly  under- 
mines the  constitution,  breaks  down  the  moral 
character  and  makes  complete  wrecks  of  those 
who  are  unable  to  escape  from  its  clutches. 
Ninety  per  cent  of  the  men  I  encountered  in  the 
Bread  Line  night  after  night  were  forced  there 
through  drink.  I  talked  and  drank  with  hun- 
dreds of  them. 

It  is  not  right  for  any  man  to  derive  a  living 
from  that  which  is  debasing  the  minds  and  ruin- 
ing the  souls  of  men  and  forcing  them  into  bread 
lines  and  jails.  No  man  has  a  moral,  or  should 
be  given  a  legal  right  to  sell  a  poison  which  pro- 
duces misery  and  madness,  destroys  the  happiness 
of  the  domestic  circle,  ruins  homes  and  families 
and  fills  the  land  with  women  and  children  in  a 
far  more  deplorable  condition  than  that  of  widows 
and  orphans,  causes  nearly  all  the  crime  and  pau- 
perism that  exists,  and  which  the  law  abiding  and 
sober  citizenship  are  obliged  to  pay  for. 


A  "good  fellow"  in  a  saloon  i*  usually  a  brute  at  home. 
Whiskey  is  the  most  destructive  agency  known  to  man. 

136 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


Saloon  keepers  know  the  goods  they  sell  will 
produce  these  results.  They  are  case  hardened. 
They  reason  it  is  a  legitimate  business  or  the 
municipality  would  not  legalize  it  by  giving  them 
a  license  to  operate. 

Every  man  who  drinks  is  running  the  race  of 
life  with  a  handicap — and  it  is  hard  to  win  and 
keep  a  place  in  that  race,  even  when  one  is  fit 
and  efficient. 

The  world  has  blundered  dreadfully  in 
handling  the  drink  question.  The  commercializa- 
tion of  the  alcoholic  traffic  and  saloons,  with  allur- 
ing temptations  on  every  hand,  has  laid  a  fright- 
fully heavy  tax  on  human  vitality,  efficiency, 
health  and  happiness. 

Who  has  pity  for  the  murderous  liquor 
traffic?  As  it  pleads  for  mercy  let  it  remember 
the  wrongs  it  has  inflicted,  let  it  remember  the 
graves  and  tears  of  wives  and  mothers  upon  whose 
tender  hearts  its  iron  heel  has  fallen,  the  awful 
wretchedness  of  mind  and  heart  of  alcohol  vie- 


That  real   article   of   Personal    Liberty,    the   Declaration    of 
Independence,  was  not  the  work  of  the  liquor  interests. 

137 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


tims.  Let  us  remember  how  faith  and  love  and 
honor  and  ambition  have  died,  how  soddened  will 
has  lost  all  power  of  resistance,  and  how  the  mur- 
derous greed  of  this  iniquity  has  turned  from  the 
spectacle  of  its  dead  and  ruined  victims  and 
reached  for  others  who  might  take  their  place 
and  fill  its  coffers.  Mercy  for  the  saloon  means 
cruelty  to  mankind.  Every  day  of  grace  for  the 
saloon  is  a  disgrace.  The  saloon  must  go  utterly, 
must  go  never  to  return.  With  the  saloon  out  of 
the  way  bread  lines  will  automatically  cease  to 
exist. 


138 


CHAPTER      ELEVEN 


How    Lawyers    Rob    and    Swindle    Prisoners    in 
Jails   and   Courts 


IN  the  fifty-five  times  I  was  arrested  for  drunk- 
*•  enness,  disorderly  conduct,  passing  bogus 
checks,  securing  money  by  false  pretenses,  and  a 
dozen  other  crimes  committed  while  insane  from 
drink,  no  matter  in  what  part  of  the  world  I  was 
arrested,  as  soon  as  in  the  police  station  or  jail,  I 
was  interviewed  by  a  lawyer.  If  I  had  money,  a 
watch  or  any  other  article  of  jewelry  or  an  over- 
coat, he  would  assure  me  of  my  release.  I  was 
trapped  several  times  into  parting  with  what  little 
change  I  had  and  never  saw  the  "lawyer"  again, 


Did  you  ever  note  how  the  "good  fellow"  who  treats  every 
man   in   a   saloon    treats   his    family? 

139 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


and  when  released  could  not  get  any  information 
as  to  the  identity  of  the  shyster.  No  one  around 
any  police  station  knew  anything  about  him,  or 
who  he  was.  But  they  knew  him,  just  the  same. 

In  Philadelphia  I  was  arrested,  charged 
with  "operating  a  confidence  game  and  in- 
toxication" and  I  gave  a  lawyer  $10.00  to  de- 
fend me.  Said  he  knew  the  judge  and  handed 
me  that  old  bunk,  "It  will  be  all  right,  my  boy." 
He  stalled  around  and  I  saw  at  once  he  had  no 
standing  in  the  court.  The  judge  asked  me  what 
I  had  to  say  for  myself.  I  said  I  was  drunk  and 
insane.  Quick  as  a  flash  the  judge  retorted,  "I 
know  you  are  drunk  by  your  appearance  and  I 
know  you  are  insane  or  you  wouldn't  employ  this 
lawyer  to  defend  you.  Six  months  in  the  work- 
house will  sober  you  up  and  unscramble  your 
mind." 

I  made  an  earnest  plea  to  the  judge,  and  so 
impressed  him  with  my  determination  "not  to 
take  another  drink"  that  he  suspended  sentence 


The  liquor  traffic  is  the  only  black  spot  in  the  pathway  of 
the  youth  of  the  country. 

140 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


and  said  if  I  would  leave  the  Quaker  City  in  one 
hour  he  would  discharge  me.  I  left,  went  across 
the  Delaware  River  to  Camden,  N.  J.,  and  at  5 
P.  M.  that  day  was  again  in  a  cell,  drunk  and  help- 
less, and  the  following  morning  I  made  a  success- 
ful "speech"  to  the  judge  and  was  released,  only 
to  be  picked  up  in  Cincinnati  two  days  later  on 
the  same  charge — "disorderly  conduct,"  drunk. 

Of  all  the  vampires,  pirates  and  robbers  the 
world  ever  knew  or  history  records  are  the  so- 
called  lawyers  and  shysters  and  ambulance 
chasers  and  personal  injury  sharks  that  hang 
around  the  police  stations,  police  courts,  and 
hospitals,  county  jails,  criminal  and  civil  courts, 
looking  for  some  poor  devil  to  "defend."  This  is 
not  libelling  the  legal  profession  as  a  whole,  for 
any  lawyer  of  standing  or  decency  does  not  have 
to  acquire  clients  in  this  manner.  Many  of  these 
hyenas  are  members  of  the  local  Bar  Associations 
in  their  respective  cities.  Nobody  cares. 

The  courts  of  Chicago  and  all  other  cities 


A  free  lunch  is  just  a  little  "come  along"  junk,  always  well 
salted  by  the  devil. 

141 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


swarm  with  an  army  of  human  legal  vermin  who 
fatten  upon  the  unfortunate,  whether  innocent 
or  guilty,  who  fall  into  the  clutches  of 
the  law.  Every  day  in  every  police  court  in  Chi- 
cago these  "lawyers"  are  awaiting  their  victims, 
like  so  many  spiders  in  their  webs. 

Every  man  admitted  to  practice  at  the  bar  in 
any  state  has  legal  and  professional  rights  that 
permit  him  to  visit  police  stations,  jails  and  courts 
and  fish  for  clients.  He  can  take  a  prisoner  and 
talk  to  him  secretly — a  "professional  courtesy" 
the  law  allows  a  lawyer  and  client.  Nearly  every 
policeman  in  Chicago  has  a  lawyer  on  his  staff 
who  is  advised  at  once  when  a  promising  arrest  is 
made.  He  is  telephoned  at  once.  These  law- 
yers will  defend  you,  bail  you  out,  or  do  anything 
in  the  world  for  you  if  you  have  a  little  money — 
maybe.  If  an  accident  occurs  and  the  wagon  or 
ambulance  is  called,  the  first  thing  a  policeman 
does  is  to  get  your  name  and  address.  The  next 
thing  is  to  telephone  to  an  ambulance  chasing  or 


Whiskey   is   a   demon  put  on   earth   by   the  devil    to   try   the 
souls   of  men. 

142 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


personal  injury  lawyer.  You  are  immediately  bam- 
boozled into  signing  a  contract  and  power  of  at- 
torney, and  even  if  you  have  a  legitimate  case 
these  hungry  hyenas  will  settle  for  a  small  sum 
for  the  purpose  of  securing  quick  money.  All  hos- 
pitals have  employes  that  give  out  the  name,  na- 
ture of  accident,  and  address  of  every  case  that 
arrives.  These  are  all  well-known  facts.  Nobody 
cares.  All  fees  received  and  settlements  made 
are  split  three  ways.  The  lawyer,  and  the  in- 
formant make  two — who  gets  the  third?  Some- 
body knows — and  nobody  cares! 

I  was  locked  up  in  the  Central  Police  Station 
in  La  Salle  Street,  Chicago,  along  with  a  well- 
dressed  Greek.  He  wanted  his  brother  notified  by 
telephone.  Instead  a  well-known  criminal  law- 
yer came  in.  He  gave  the  lawyer  fifty  dollars  to 
defend  him  and  fifty  more  for  going  on  his  bond 
for  the  measly  sum  of  $300.00.  He  was  in  on 
some  trivial  charge  and  the  next  day  the  judge 
discharged  him.  He  would  have  discharged  him 


Moderate  drinkin,g   is   the   father  of  all  drunkenness. 
Whiskey  is  made  in  coils  as  a  tribute  to  the  serpent. 

143 


MY       LAST       DRINK 


anyway.  There  was  no  evidence  to  hold  him.  I 
talked  with  the  man  later  on  the  street  and  he 
said :  "If  I  or  my  friends  ever  get  in  trouble  again 
I  will  employ  the  same  lawyer,  as  he  has  a  pull." 
There  is  not  a  judge  on  the  bench  in  the  United 
States  that  pays  the  least  attention  to  these  petti- 
fogging shysters. 

The  method  of  procedure  in  separating  a 
prisoner  from  his  money,  diamonds,  watch  or  any 
article  of  jewelry,  or  his  overcoat — if  it  is  a  good 
one — is  like  this:  On  the  way  to  the  station  the 
policeman  who  made  the  arrest,  says:  "You're  in 
a  bad  jam,  old  top.  Have  you  got  a  lawyer?"  Of 
course  not.  "Well,  you  need  a  guy  that  can  han- 
dle the  judge.  Just  say  nothing  and  I  will  send 
a  good  lawyer  down  to  the  cell  to  have  a  talk 
with  you." 

In  fifteen  minutes  the  lawyer  comes. 

"You  have  a  bad  case,  but  I  can  'fix  it.' 
Have  you  got  any  money?" 

"Nothing  but  this  diamond  ring  and  watch," 


No  man  should  be  allowed  to  sell  a  poison  which  produces 
misery  and  madness. 

144 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


says  the  party  arrested,  who  has  been  picked  up 
for  some  simple  infraction  of  the  law. 

The  lawyer  claims  friendship  with  the  judge. 
Takes  his  diamond  and  watch ;  gets  the  case  con- 
tinued until  his  client  can  give  him  the  names  of 
eight  or  ten  of  his  friends,  and  the  lawyer  will 
call  on  them  with  a  hard  luck  story  about  the  man 
in  jail  and  "touch"  each  of  them  for  $5  or  $10. 
When  the  case  is  finally  called  the  judge  dis- 
charges the  prisoner  with  a  reprimand. 

In  nearly  all  police  stations  is  a  conspicuous 
sign,  "Watch  Your  Step,"  but  it  ought  to  be 
changed  to  "Watch  Your  Watch." 

There  is  something  grimly  grotesque  with 
that  old  leaden-heeled  "justice."  The  lead  has 
been  changed  to  rubber,  so  the  lawyer  crook 
cannot  slip. 

There  are  thousands  of  Chicago  people  who 
have  been  victims  of  these  skinners,  sharks,  and 
shysters  and  today  there  are  hundreds  of  lawyers 
practicing  this  robbing  game  and  in  full  and  hon- 


The  "Death  Bell"  on  a.  saloon  cash  register  is  a 
"Death  Knell." 

145 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


orable  professional  standing.  The  bench  and  bar 
are  fully  aware  of  these  nefarious  practices.  No- 
body seems  to  care.  It  is  somebody's  business  to 
break  up  this  shameful  system. 

Frequently  a  lawyer  who  has  been  paid  a 
good  sum  to  secure  bail  for  some  one  detained 
in  a  cell,  will  allow  him  to  go  back  to  jail  at  the 
request  of  a  professional  bondsman  or  a  "bond 
shark,"  because  the  latter  has  reached  the  limit 
of  his  property  margin  and  wishes  to  surrender 
the  man  who  has  already  paid  in  order  to  qualify 
and  collect  from  a  new  customer.  Nobody  cares ! 

The  minute  a  man  is  arrested  and  haled  to 
the  police  station  the  first  thing  done  is  to  search 
him.  Money,  jewelry  and  all  things  of  value  are 
taken  and  you  are  given  a  receipt  for  same.  If 
you  are  too  drunk  to  have  a  complete  mental  in- 
ventory of  your  possessions  you  are  liable  to  be 
handed  a  receipt  for  any  amount,  although  you 
might  have  $200  in  your  possession.  A  "bond 
shark"  and  lawyer  are  at  once  notified,  and  when 


Whiskey  with  a  "kick"  is  always  working  overtime.  Millions 
have  been  "kicked"  into  eternity. 

146 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


they  get  through,  you  will  be  thoroughly  cleaned. 
Another  favorite  pastime  is  to  run  a  man  in 
for  being  "sassy"  or  failure  to  "move  along." 
Search  him,  and  if  he  is  a  live  one,  don't  book  him, 
but  notify  a  "lawyer"  who  is  on  the  job  in  a 
minute.  He  will  get  you  out  for  $5  or  $25,  or 
$50,  according  to  the  amount  found  on  your  per- 
son when  searched.  In  a  few  minutes  you  are  re- 
leased having  never  been  "booked."  You  think 
the  lawyer  has  a  "pull."  The  police  know  that 
no  judge  would  convict  the  prisoner  even  if  booked 
and  held.  This  is  a  favorite  pastime  and  works 
particularly  well  at  night  when  the  commanding 
officer  is  usually  at  home. 

A  big  burly  copper  said  to  me  in  one  of  the 
police  stations: 

"Alderman,  the  'big  fellows'  are  all  getting 
theirs  and  we  know  it,  and  we  are  grabbing  a 
bone  whenever  we  get  a  chance.  They  are  get- 
ting so  bold  that  they  will  soon  be  tripped" — 
and  some  of  them  have  been. 


The  claw  of  the  tiger  is  always   felt  in  the  handshake  of  a 
liquor   dealer. 

147 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


Shortly  after  this  conversation  there  were 
some  astounding  police  revelations,  which  were 
only  a  scratch  on  the  surface. 

A  poor  devil  gets  injured  and  is  rushed  to  a 
hospital.  Out  comes  an  ambulance  chasing 
lawyer.  Advises  him  to  not  sign  any  paper  or 
settle  with  any  claim  agent.  Will  promise  to  re- 
cover $10,000  damages  at  once.  Shows  a  book 
containing  names  of  hundreds  of  men  who  have 
been  injured  and  received  award  of  damages. 
The  cases  are  cited  from  every  part  of  the  United 
States  and  many  are  twenty  years  old.  He  claims 
them  as  his  own  cases  and  settlements. 

"Just  sign  this  power  of  attorney  and  con- 
tract and  I  will  take  your  case  on  a  contingent 
basis/' 

The  poor  man  falls  for  this  bunk  and  signs 
the  paper.  The  shyster  settles  for  little  or  noth- 
ing and  gives  his  client  whatever  he  pleases.  The 
shyster  wants  quick  money.  Court  procedure 
and  delays  do  not  appeal  to  him. 


When    you    find    a    saloon    keeper    filled    with    the    milk    of 
human  kindness,  look  out!     It  is  usually  skimmed  milk. 

148 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


It  is  well  that  the  public  should  know  what 
a  "contingent  fee"  is.  You  give  one  of  these  vam- 
pires your  case  and  he  agrees  to  advance  all  court 
costs  and  fees  and  prosecute  your  case  for  one- 
half  the  amount  received.  It  sounds  reasonable. 
If  the  lawyer  loses  the  suit  he  gets  nothing ;  if  he 
wins  the  suit  you  get  nothing.  Simple,  isn't  it? 

Should  you  ever  get  injured  or  in  trouble  of 
any  kind  look  out  for  the  Blackstone  boy  with  a 
contingent  contract  in  his  pocket. 


149 


CHAPTER      TWELVE 


My   Coming    Back 


I  WAGED  war  with  the  demon  and  I  am  no 
*  longer  in  bondage.  Starting  in  at  the  scene 
of  my  defeat  I  am  rapidly  working  myself  up  the 
highway  of  sobriety,  respect,  contentment  and 
health. 

It  was  a  long,  hard,  bitter  battle,  but  at  last 
I  conquered  the  enemy.  I  am  now  free  from  this 
terrible  incubus  of  drink,  and  the  memory  of  those 
ruinous  years  can  never  be  wholly  eradicated. 
My  thoughts  are  now  free  from  remorse  or  fear, 
for  in  my  final  rise  from  the  cavernous  depths 
of  drunkenness  and  despair  to  the  beautiful  light 


A  ride  in  a  patrol  wagon  is  not  a  joy  ride,  but  many 
joyous  men  take  it. 

150 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


of  soberness  and  the  possession  of  an  unshackled 
mind  I  have  cheerfully  conveyed  to  the  world  my 
experience  with  that  monster,  whiskey,  and  to  the 
silent  and  secret  sufferer  who  has  been  enmeshed 
in  the  whirlpool,  give  encouragement,  and  warn 
drinking  men  of  the  abyss  yawning  to  swallow 
and  clutch  and  strangle  them  in  deadly  embrace 
unless  the  habit  is  stopped  at  once. 

No  human  being  or  pen  can  truthfully  por- 
tray the  silent  and  terrible  grip  that  gnaws  at 
the  heart  of  a  man  who  is  coming  back  to  a  life 
of  sobriety  after  years  of  terrible  dissipation.  It 
is  a  tortuous  trip.  Thousands  embark  for  pass- 
age but  few  arrive  at  an  absolutely  sober  desti- 
nation. Temptations  and  discouragements  are 
always  in  evidence. 

There  is  no  fixed  time  that  a  man  cursed  and 
burdened  with  drink  comes  to  himself,  but  I  was 
coming  back,  and  in  a  manner  and  route  that 
proved  providential.  My  time  to  be  freed  of  the 
demon  had  been  marked  out.  My  last  drunken 


No  one  but  a  saloon  keeper  needs  whiskey  in  his  business. 
The  drink  habit  is  like  a  tornado — it  grows  in  intensity 

151 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


attempt  to  secure  money,  paradoxical  as  it  may 
seem,  resulted  in  my  reformation.  God  certainly 
moves  men  in  mysterious  ways,  His  wonders  to 
perform. 

One  cold  February  morning  in  1914  I  called 
at  the  office  of  the  Western  Fuel  Company,  Adams 
and  Rockwell  Streets,  Chicago,  and  presented  a 
check  with  the  request  that  I  be  accommodated 
with  the  currency.  While  pretending  to  accom- 
modate me  a  clerk  stepped  to  the  telephone  and 
called  up  the  bank  whose  check  I  was  using.  They 
told  the  clerk  that  the  check  was  worthless,  to 
call  an  officer.  I  heard  the  word  "officer"  re- 
peated by  the  clerk  to  the  assistant  manager. 

I  shot  out  of  the  door,  north  on  Rockwell 
Street,  west  on  Monroe,  and  when  I  reached 
Washtenaw  Avenue  I  was  confronted  by  about 
twenty  coal  heavers  from  the  Fuel  Company's 
yards  with  shovels  and  clubs.  Of  course  I  sur- 
rendered. I  capitulated  to  this  vast  "army."  To 
the  office  I  was  taken.  On  my  arrival  a  police 


The  man  who  wants   "just   one  more  drink"   it   usually   am 
irreclaimable  victim. 

152 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


officer  was  awaiting  me.  I  was  taken  to  the  War- 
ren Avenue  Police  Station.  I  was  trembling  and 
nervous,  shattered  from  drink,  and  the  police 
officer  took  pity  on  my  awful  condition  and  al- 
lowed me  to  go  into  a  saloon  on  the  corner  of 
Madison  street  and  Campbell  Avenue  and  secure 
a  drink  of  whiskey.  I  was  on  the  verge  of  de- 
lirium tremens.  God  knows  I  needed  a  stimulant. 
That  was  "My  Last  Drink"  and  from  that  minute 
I  forsook  strong  drink  forever. 

The  following  morning  I  was  taken  to  the 
Desplaines  Street  Police  Station,  arraigned  be- 
fore Judge  H.  P.  Ddlan,  a  jurist  who  had  known 
me  in  the  days  when  I  was  a  prosperous, 
respected  and  sober  citizen.  As  I  was  brought 
to  the  bar,  the  judge  viewed  me  with  a  pitying 
eye  and  said: — "Alderman,  you  are  charged 
with  operating  a  confidence  game.  What  have 
you  to  say?" 

I  admitted  the  charge  against  me  was  true. 
Told  the  judge  I  was  drunk  at  the  time,  had  only 

The  pop  of  a  champagne  cork  is  a  warning  shot  of  an 
impending  battle!      Look  out! 

153 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


a  vague  recollection  of  the  transaction,  that  I 
was  already  on  parole  from  Judge  John  P.  Ma- 
honey's  court,  and  had  just  been  released  from 
the  county  jail.  I  begged  the  court  to  change 
the  charge  in  the  complaint  from  "operating  a 
confidence  game,"  which  would  send  me  back  to 
the  county  jail  to  await  action  by  the  grand  jury, 
to  "disorderly  conduct,"  which  would  place  me 
within  jurisdiction  of  his  court.  After  some 
thought  the  judge  changed  the  charge.  I  plead 
guilty,  and  was  sentenced  to  serve  sixty  days  in 
the  House  of  Correction. 

Judge  Dolan  was  kind  enough  to  recom- 
mend that  I  be  placed  in  the  hospital  and  re- 
quested me  to  write  to  him  at  the  end  of  thirty 
days  and  if  convinced  I  wanted  to  stop  drinking 
he  would  assist  me  in  securing  a  release.  I 
remained  in  the  House  of  Correction  only  a  few 
days,  however,  my  never  failing  friends  coming 
to  the  front  and  securing  my  release. 

After  I  was  sentenced  by  the  judge  I  was 


Saloon  keepers   thrive   by   having    minors    form    the   habit   of 
liquor   drinking   at    the    earliest   possible    age. 

154 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


bundled  into  the  House  of  Correction  bus  for  my 
journey.  This  bus  will  seat  about  twenty,  but 
this  time  it  held  forty  human  beings,  packed  and 
crowded  and  squeezed  in.  The  door  was 
locked  and  away  we  went — drunken  men, 
Chinamen,  negroes,  a  ragged  underworld  mob, 
and  such  a  foul-smelling  aggregation  of  sup- 
posedly human  beings  were  never  before  huddled 
together.  On  arriving  at  the  prison  our 
names,  ages  and  occupations  were  taken;  a  bath 
and  shave  followed  and  with  a  suit  of  prison 
clothes  on  our  backs  were  marched  to  our  home — 
a  cell. 

From  that  hour  I  was  plunged  into  a  pro- 
found, persistent  melancholy.  It  was  as  if  the 
whole  fabric  of  life  had  suddenly  toppled  over 
and  crashed  down  upon  my  brain.  As  I  peered 
through  the  bars  an  awful  loneliness  came  over 
me.  I  was  sober  at  last.  I  felt  such  a  horror  at 
being  shut  out  from  the  world  that  I  determined 
that  I  would  never  touch  another  drop  of  strong 


Alcohol  is  pushing  thousands  of  human  beings  into  the 
vortex    of   death. 

155 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


drink.  From  that  minute  my  coming  back  started. 
I  am  as  firm  as  the  Rock  of  Gibraltar  that  I  have 
had  "My  Last  Drink." 

There  was  no  dawn  of  hopefulness  that  I 
could  map  out.  The  shadows  of  life  were 
lengthening  and  growing  thinner.  Time  and 
age  were  relentlessly  creeping  and  ill  health,  a 
legacy  from  drink,  were  facts  whirling  through 
my  brain  with  lightning  rapidity. 

Everything  was  dark,  dead.  I  realized  that 
Time  had  its  hand  on  the  door  of  my  life.  There 
was  nothing  in  the  past  to  which  I  could  turn.  I 
must  begin  life  over  again.  I  flung  myself  on 
my  cell  cot  and  with  closed  eyes  could  see  my  past 
go  round  and  round  like  the  hands  of  a  clock.  My 
grief  and  trouble  were  borne  in  silence.  The  ter- 
rible quietness  prevailing  was  worse  than  death 
itself.  I  was  stunned.  The  path  I  had  traveled 
had  come  to  its  end.  I  could  not  rid  myself  of 
the  memory  of  the  past.  Here  I  was  a  convict. 
For  what?  For  attempting  to  secure  money  in 


Keep   up   your  batting   average,    Mr.    Boozer — the   bleacher* 
for  yours. 

156 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


an  illegitimate  way,  to  appease  my  insatiable 
desire  for  drink. 

This  same  place  is  yawning  for  every  drink- 
ing man.  No  man  who  flirts  with  alcohol  is  im- 
mune from  the  path  I  followed  and  the  end  I 
found.  The  clock  of  human  life  is  set  at  a  defi- 
nite point.  The  pendulum  will  some  day  swing 
the  other  way,  either  for  better  or  worse,  and 
usually  worse  for  the  drinking  man. 

Coming  back  after  you  have  dropped  to  the 
bottom  is  a  slow,  wearisome  journey.  One 
hardly  knows  which  way  to  turn  or  what  to  do. 
Friends  and  acquaintances  have  lost  confidence 
in  you,  employers  are  chary  about  giving  employ- 
ment, and  I  found  myself  at  the  bottom  of  the 
ladder  of  life.  With  credit,  reputation  and 
standing  absolutely  gone  the  outlook  was  in- 
deed discouraging. 

I  soon  discovered  it  was  a  pretty  good  world 
after  all,  for  I  found  many  loyal  friends,  and 
quickly,  too. 


Sober  men  stand,  but  drunken  men  fall  in  the  battle  of  life. 
A  man  with  a  shiny  coat  is  usually  a  polished  saloon  bum. 

157 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


To  Mr.  David  E.  Gibson,  Chairman  of  the 
Mutual  Improvement  Committee  of  Oriental 
Consistory,  and  Mr.  Nelson  N.  Lampert,  Vice 
President  of  the  Fort  Dearborn  National  Bank, 
I  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude  that  can  never  be 
repaid  while  I  live,  for  they  guided,  advised  and 
assisted  me  on  the  way  to  my  regeneration. 

As  soon  as  I  convinced  these  gentlemen  I 
had  taken  "My  Last  Drink,"  there  was  nothing 
spared  to  encourage  me  in  every  way.  They 
secured  employment  and  tendered  substan- 
tial financial  assistance,  exacting  nothing  from 
me  but  a  promise  to  be  firm.  Had  it  not  been 
for  these  two  Samaritans  my  coming  back  would 
indeed  have  been  rocky  and  almost  impossible  to 
achieve.  What  these  good  men  did  for  me  was 
voluntary,  and  they  were  actuated  solely  by  a 
noble  desire  to  do  humanitarian  work.  Their 
mission  has  not  been  fruitless.  They  are  as  much 
gratified  at  the  outcome  of  their  kindness  as  my- 
self and  family. 


Successful   drinkers   are   always   business    failures. 
A  quiet  drinker  becomes  loud  with  age. 

158 


MY      LAST      DRINK 


There  are  scores  of  others  in  Chicago  who 
have  been  restored  to  a  life  of  usefulness  and  so- 
briety by  these  gentlemen,  privately  and  without 
ostentation  or  publicity,  men  who  have  told  me 
their  pathetic  story,  and  are  today  a  credit  to 
themselves,  the  community,  and  a  pleasure  to 
their  benefactors. 

If  any  moderate  drinker  who  regards  prohi- 
bition as  an  enemy  to  his  personal  liberty  could 
only  know  of  my  happiness  and  contrast  it  with 
the  despair  I  had  endured  through  drink,  surely 
he  would  not  refuse  to  forego  his  moderate  drink 
and  do  his  utmost  to  put  this  home  wrecking  in- 
cubus out  of  reach  of  the  poor  wretches  whose 
appetites  have  grown  beyond  their  control. 

Sobriety  stands  for  law,  order,  peace  and 
happiness.  Whiskey  stands  for  drunkenness, 
poverty,  distress,  crime,  vice  and  all  its  countless 
attendant  consequences. 

It  is  not  only  the  welfare  of  individuals  and 
of  families  but  the  future  of  the  entire  nation  that 


Whiskey  kills  honesty,  ambition,  loyalty  and  all  that  is 
good  in  man. 

159 


MY     LAST      DRINK 


is  involved  in  this  evil.  It  is  a  social,  moral,  relig- 
ious, industrial  and  political  question,  and  is  vital 
to  the  future  of  the  race  as  well  as  the  nation. 

Business  efficiency,  industrial  economy,  the 
fundamental  principles  of  thrift,  clean  manhood, 
pure  womanhood,  and  good  citizenship,  demand 
the  abolition  of  the  drink  traffic. 

The  drink  traffic  is  the  paramount  problem 
in  the  United  States  today.  It  constrains  all  citi- 
zens who  believe  in  law  and  order  and  decency 
and  a  proper  enforcement  of  the  law  to  arm  for 
the  encounter,  forget  all  party  lines  in  the  fight 
with  a  foe  that  is  the  most  malignant  and  dan- 
gerous the  world  has  ever  known. 

The  rights  of  humanity  and  the  good  of  the 
community  must  at  all  times  first  be  considered, 
and  it  is  my  purpose  to  devote  the  remainder  of 
my  days  to  assist  in  the  uplifting  of  those  en- 
thralled in  the  quagmire  of  drink,  who  have  lost 
their  moorings  and  are  being  plunged  headlong 
into  an  awful  maelstrom  of  destruction. 


The  rights  of  humanity  demand  the  absolute  overthrow  of 
the  liquor  industry. 

160 


